Table of Contents
Starsky finds his dream house and convinces Hutch to enter into their biggest joint investment yet. A gruesome murder case strikes tragically close for Hutch, and Starsky faces the ugly specter of anti-Semitism in his own backyard.
Copyright 1997
Vengeance is Mine: The Song Quote Credits
Chapter 1 Roses on White Lace
Written by: Alice Cooper & Kane Roberts
Performed by: Alice Cooper
From the Album: Raise Your Fist and Yell
Chapter 2 The Glory of Love
Written by: P. Cetera, D. Foster, D. Nini
Performed by: Peter Cetera
From the Album: Solitude/Solitaire
Chapter 3 Home Sweet Home
Written by: N. Sixx, V. Neil, T. Lee
Performed by: Motley Crue
From the Album: Theatre of Pain
Chapter 4 Shocker
Written by: D. Child, J. Beauvoir, G.M. Dude
Performed by: The Dudes of Wrath
From the Album: Shocker: The Music
Chapter 5 With You All The Way
Written by: C. Wurtz
Performed by: New Edition
From the Album: All for Love
Chapter 6 You’re the Story of my Life
Written by: D. Child & D. Warren
Performed by: Desmond Child
From the Album: Discipline
Chapter 7 Because You Loved Me
Written by: Diane Warren
Performed by: Celine Dion
From the Album: Falling into You
Chapter 8 Because You Loved Me
Written by: Diane Warren
Performed by: Celine Dion
From the Album: Falling into You
Chapter 9 Another World
Written by: J. Leffler & R.. Schuckett
Performed by: Crystal Gayle & Gary Morris
From the Album: What If We Fall in Love
Chapter 10 You’re A Friend of Mine
Written by: J. Cohen & N.M. Walden
Performed by: Clarence Clemons & Jackson Browne
From the Album: Hero
Chapter 11 You Can Make History (Young Again)
Written by: E. John & B. Taupin
Performed by: Elton John
From the Album: Love Songs
Chapter 12 All I Have
Written by: B. Nielsen Chapman
Performed by: Beth Nielsen Chapman
From the Album: Beth Nielsen Chapman
Chapter 13 Un-Break My Heart
Written by: D. Warren
Performed by: Toni Braxton
From the Album: Secrets
Chapter 14 Can’t Cry Hard Enough
Written by: D. Williams & M. Etzioni
Performed by: The Williams Brothers
From the Album: The Williams Brothers
Chapter 15 The Living Years
Written by: M. Rutherford & B.A. Robertson
Performed by: Mike & the Mechanics
From the Album: The Living Years
Chapter 16 The Wind Beneath My Wings
Written by: L. Henry & J. Silbar
Performed by: Bette Midler
From the Album: Beaches Soundtrack
Chapter 17 The Last Song
Written by: E. John & B. Taupin
Performed by: Elton John
From the Album: The One
The Closing Home Again
Written by: Carole King
Performed by: Carole King
From the Album: Tapestry
CHAPTER 1
I saw you in your wedding gown,
The prettiest dress.
I came into your room that night
And made such a mess…
In my own way, I lovingly kiss the bride,
With your ring in your hand, your eyes and your mouth open wide…
In my eyes
Blood drops look like roses on white lace…
Hutch made his way down the hall toward the squad room, bumping into several people as he reviewed a glossy travel brochure extolling the virtues of Maui for honeymooners. Tucked under his arm was another brochure equally convincing for skiing in Aspen. Maybe Starsky would flip a coin and handle the decision for them.
“What do you think is most romantic—skiing in Aspen or swimming in Maui?” Hutch asked his partner, who was licking donut icing off his thumb and regarding him with the usual fond grin that he bestowed on Hutch when he was up to his neck in wedding plans. The whole flashy wedding and extensive pre-planning was so out of character for Hutch that Starsky would have pitied him if he wasn’t marrying the most remarkable woman in the world.
“‘Morning,” Starsky replied, chortling a little. “Well, if it were me, I’d go for Aspen.”
“Since when? I thought you said you didn’t like skiing.”
“You’re not taking me, remember?” Starsky retorted, still smiling. “You like it, Sandra likes it, and those long evenings in front of a fireplace have all sorts of potential, if you get my drift.”
“Drift? A little cheap snow humor?” Hutch started re-reading the Aspen brochure.
“Where’s Sandra wanna go?”
“One or the other. She can’t decide so it’s up to me.”
“Aspen, I’m tellin’ ya, buddy.”
“Okay. Aspen it is. Decision made.” He tossed the brochures in the drawer and accepted the cup of coffee Starsky poured and handed across, his hand shaking a little as he did.
“Will you relax?” Starsky was still grinning at his partner’s rattled state.
“Relax? Do you have even the slightest idea what I have to do today? Besides work, I’ve got the exterminator and the electrician showing up at the house this afternoon, I have to go get fitted for that funeral coat—”
“Morning coat, Hutch, morning coat,” Starsky corrected, snickering.
“Then I have to go pick up carpet samples and—”
“What’s Sandra doing?”
“Her mother has an itinerary for her that actually looks worse than mine.” Hutch rubbed his forehead and ran his hand back through his hair.
“Tell ya what. I’ll go let in the electrician and the exterminator, okay? Then I’ll swing back here and pick you up and we’ll go get fitted for our monkey suits.”
“Thanks, pal.”
“No sweat. Hey, you got the toughest part of the wedding all set up—” he noted Hutch’s baffled expression. “You found the right girl.” That brought a genuine wide smile of complete joy over his partner’s stress-drawn features.
“Yeah, I guess I did that, didn’t I?”
* * * *
Starsky pulled up in front of the little frame house that had been the source of much of his partner’s angst in the last several weeks. It was in a nice, quiet neighborhood on a tree-lined street with sidewalks and neatly manicured lawns. Perfect place to raise a whole snag of little Hutchinsons, Starsky thought with a grin. Of course that would mean a bigger house, or maybe an addition on this one. It was one of the smaller ones on the block, so it would still be a wise investment to add on to it.
He let himself in the front door with the key Hutch had given him when the couple first bought the house. Starsky wondered if Sandra knew that he had been given a set of keys the same day they got theirs, but then figured she wouldn’t be upset by that. She had gotten used to their intermingled lifestyle from the start, and that was probably a big part of why Hutch finally proposed. No one, since Terry, had fit in with their friendship and partnership as willingly. Others had faked it for a while, but there would come the inevitable acid remark suggesting they ought to date each other and forget trying to find time for a woman, or a tense evening where the third person was made to feel extremely unwelcome by the female half of the couple.
Like Terry had taken an instant liking to Hutch, Sandra had hit it off with Starsky from the first time they met. She seemed pleased that if her future husband was in a dangerous line of work, he had a partner who cared sincerely about him and his safety looking out for him. They’d had fun doubling, or sometimes just the three of them shared dinner and munchies and caught an old movie on the tube. More often than not though, Starsky knew enough to make himself scarce when working hours were over. With Sandra’s long hours managing the boutique she owned—or more accurately, that her affluent parents had bought for her—and Hutch’s schedule, the couple had enough trouble finding time to be together without constantly having him tagging along.
The house boasted a good-sized living room, three moderately-sized bedrooms and a bath and a half. The kitchen faced east, letting in a flood of morning sunlight. This morning, it was almost glowing as it reflected off the yellow and white daisy-print wallpaper the three of them had hung the previous weekend. The new appliances had been delivered, wedding presents from Sandra’s parents. Starsky smiled as he recalled that Hutch was going to be subjected to an evening of dinette set shopping that night. That was one invitation Starsky had gracefully side-stepped with the excuse of a mythical date. His real date was with the Torino’s engine, which definitely needed some CPR. The aging car was causing him more and more problems, but he was insistent on keeping it. Somehow being up to his elbows in grease was preferable to a night of haunting furniture stores.
“Dave?” Sandra’s voice startled him from behind. He turned to see her shoulder-length yellow blonde hair set on fire by the sunlight. Those kids are gonna be blonds for sure, Starsky thought, smiling inwardly.
“Sorry if I startled you,” he responded. “I came over to let in the exterminator for Hutch. He had some errands for the case we’re on.”
“He’s really hating all this wedding stuff, isn’t he?” She looked worried. The frown that curved her mouth downward and clouded her usually clear blue eyes made Starsky smile widely, hoping to dispel it.
“Hutch might do some grumbling, but he loves you like crazy. He’s not much for the flashy stuff, but he’ll handle it.”
“My parents always wanted me to have a big wedding. I’m their only child, you know.”
“Hutch is about as happy as I’ve ever seen him. A few wedding hassles aren’t going to change that.”
“I’m glad.” She smiled a little uneasily.
“Hey, do you want me to hit the road?” Something in Sandra’s jittery demeanor indicated a woman with a mission, and though she would never lapse in her courtesy toward Hutch’s partner, Starsky got the feeling he was complicating something by being there. “I was just hanging out waiting for the bug man. If you’d like some time to yourself to do something…”
“Ah, yeah, if you don’t mind, I…I would.” She was twisting her engagement ring a little, a characteristic sign she was nervous. Starsky noticed what small, pretty hands she had. He had laughed a little to himself at the size difference in the couple when he first saw them together. Sandra was 5’2″ and very small-boned. Next to his 6’1″ partner holding one of those big hands, she looked positively tiny.
“No, I don’t mind. You want me to come back at one for the electrician or are you going to be here?”
“No, thanks–I’ll be here…Dave, I really hate to—”
“Don’t worry about it, kiddo. I’ve got to pick up a couple things for the Torino at the auto parts place before I go back to work, so this’ll give me a little more time.”
“Thanks, Dave.” She smiled brightly as he walked through the living room and out the front door. He noticed a delivery van arriving, but dismissed it as one more project she had initiated that Hutch hadn’t yet mentioned. He slid behind the wheel of the Torino and headed for the strip mall nearby. It seemed a little odd Sandra had taken him up on his offer to leave quite so quickly, but then she probably didn’t want to be bothered with company while she had delivery people coming.
* * * *
After the fitting session for their suits, the two detectives returned to Metro, still eating the last of their lunch. It was obvious as soon as they walked in the door that the routine pace of their day was about to be shattered. An hysterical woman was shrieking at the desk sergeant about a murder going unavenged and was accusing the department of sand-bagging in the investigation of her daughter’s murder. After tossing the remains of their food into a nearby trash can, Hutch approached her first.
“Excuse me, ma’am. I’m Detective Hutchinson, this is my partner, Detective Starsky. Is there anything we can do?”
“My daughter was murdered over a month ago, and this department is doing absolutely nothing worthwhile to find her killer!” she wailed back at him.
“Why don’t we go somewhere quiet and you can fill us in, okay?”
Somewhat calmed by the prospect of someone listening, she allowed them to lead her to an interrogation room down the hall. She was a tall woman, her almost aristocratic bearing inconsistent with the temper tantrum she had been throwing in the hallway. She had dark hair which was streaked with white, swirled neatly in an ornate hairstyle accented by a silver comb. She wore a navy suit and heels.
Seated at the table with a cup of coffee in front of her, she seemed to regain a little of her composure.
“What was your daughter’s name, ma’am”‘ Starsky asked, preparing to go pull the file.
“Madeleine Nolan. It would have been Gardner next week,” she responded, her voice shaking. “My name is Margaret Nolan,” she added as an afterthought.
“She was getting married?” Hutch asked, feeling a chill run up and down his spine. His own wedding was one week from the coming Saturday.
“Yes. She was such beautiful girl.” Mrs. Nolan produced a snap shot from her purse and handed it to Hutch. A slightly-built blonde girl was sitting on a porch railing, smiling brightly. All the facts about this case he’d overheard came rushing back to Hutch. A beautiful young woman had been found brutally murdered, wearing her wedding dress. The case had kept another pair of detectives on edge for weeks now.
“Hutch?” Starsky noticed the color draining from his partner’s face.
“Look.” He handed it to Starsky, and immediately the other noticed the resemblance to Sandra.
“Hey, I’m going to go look up that file. Very pretty lady,” Starsky said, handing the photo back to Mrs. Nolan.
“Thank you.”
There was an uneasy silence for a few moments until Starsky returned, since Hutch didn’t want to have the woman tell her story twice. The resemblance of the dead girl to his fiancée was making Hutch uncomfortably nervous.
“How long before her death was this photo taken?” Hutch asked, evaluating the almost bubbly demeanor the photo seemed to convey.
“The day before,” Mrs. Nolan answered solemnly. Hutch’s head snapped up from his concentration on the picture.
“The day before?”
“She was planning to be married in a week to a young man she had been engaged to all through college. They were in love, excited about the wedding…”
“Excuse me,” Starsky stuck his head back in the door. “Hutch, you wanna come out here a moment?”
“Sure. Excuse us.” Hutch walked out in the hall to meet Starsky, who was holding a manilla file folder.
“It’s Nedloe and Elliot’s case. Girl was found stabbed to death, wearing her wedding dress, of all things. Crime scene photos oughtta take care of your lunch,” Starsky warned. “Anyway, no signs of forced entry, so of course, they really went after the boyfriend, but that came up empty, at least so far.”
“Those guys are good. If there’s anything that should be done, they’re doing it.”
“What do we tell her?”
“It isn’t our case… No point putting this off.” Hutch was quiet a minute, leaning against the wall of the hallway, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “Maybe we should just say we’ll review the case with the other detectives assigned to it. We can do that much” Hutch led the way back inside, and Mrs. Nolan looked up expectantly at first, then her expression darkened.
“Mrs. Nolan, my partner and I will review the case with the detectives assigned to the case. Have you spoken with them directly?”
“Of course I have. To absolutely no avail. They were very polite but it’s obvious they’ve made no progress.”
“Detectives Nedloe and Elliot are one of our best teams. I can assure you they’re doing everything possible—” Starsky was cut off mid-sentence.
“Why doesn’t that bolster my confidence?” she shot back sarcastically.
“Because you want an easy answer from us that we can’t give you.” Starsky took a deep breath and attempted to maintain his patience and courtesy. “All I can say is that we’ll ask some questions. The case isn’t ours, and we have no reason to suspect the detectives handling it aren’t doing their best to solve it. I can check and see if either of them are in if you’d like to speak—”
“Bureaucratic double talk!” She stormed toward the door. “My daughter was murdered. I won’t rest until someone in this God-forsaken hell hole of a city listens to me!” She raced out the door in tears.
“First time I’ve been accused of being bureaucratic about anything,” Starsky said with a faint smile.
“The way she looked so much like Sandra—creepy. Just a nasty coincidence.” Hutch shuddered, then said, “Think I’ll go over to the house and see if she’s there.”
“Okay. I’ll handle the meet with Huggy’s friend. Shouldn’t be anything big anyway.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Take a couple hours and do something romantic.” Starsky patted him on the shoulder and hurried off down the hall toward the exit.
* * * *
Hutch pulled up in front of the white frame house, happy to see Sandra’s blue Volkswagen Beetle parked in the drive. Carrying a bouquet of pink carnations, her favorites, he made his way up to the front door and opened it, catching the smell of fresh paint, wallpaper glue and carpeting. The redecorating efforts were coming along beautifully. He would be anxious to see Starsky’s “before” pictures, snapped on an early Saturday morning before the first coats of paint were applied.
“Honey, I’m home!” he called out, laughing a little.
“Ken!” Sandra emerged from one of the bedrooms and ran out to hug and kiss him, giggling a little as he lifted her off the floor with her arms still around his neck. When her feet were back on the ground, he presented her with the flowers. “What’s the occasion?” she asked, obviously delighted with the surprise.
“Just felt like seeing you, sweetheart.” He embraced her again suddenly, and she barely managed to rescue the flowers from being crushed. She returned the pressure, not saying anything for a moment, wondering what had happened at work that had unsettled him this way.
“Ken? Did something happen? Is Dave okay?” She was running through all the possible scenarios in her mind, but he released her and smiled broadly at her, hoping to allay her obvious uneasiness about his behavior.
“He’s fine. I just missed you. It’s been a whole six hours since I saw you last.” He pulled her back into his arms and caught her lips in a prolonged kiss. Coming up for air, she giggled a little.
“Your mustache tickles.”
“Sandra,” he responded in an exasperated tone, feeling sure she was going to start needling him about shaving it off again. Surprisingly she didn’t.
“I have a surprise for you, honey. It’s back here. Are your shoes clean?” It seemed an absurd question, considering he had owned them for over a year, but he smiled and answered it politely.
“Probably not.” He kicked them off and left them by the door, following her in his stocking feet across the padded beige carpeting toward the bedroom next to the one that would be theirs.
It had been decorated with blue and pink wallpaper displaying bunnies, teddy bears and lettered blocks. There was a large oak crib in the middle of the room, with a mobile suspended above it.
“You like it?” she asked, trying to stifle a huge smile.
“I don’t understand…Sandra…are you….are we…?”
“In a little less than seven months.” She nodded emphatically, bursting into a little laugh.
“Oh my God!” He lifted her up in both arms and swirled her around twice, squeezing hard before letting her down again. “When did you find out?” he asked, laughing with the pure joy of the moment.
“Yesterday. I wanted to get this done before I told you.”
“God, I love you.” He leaned down and their lips met in a kiss. “I don’t believe it. We’re gonna have a kid!”
* * * *
Starsky typed up the last of his report of the brief meeting with Fingers, Huggy’s friend. Fingers—what a name to type up in a report. Dobey’ll love this one, Starsky thought to himself as he put the final scrawl of his signature at the bottom. Just then, his partner raced into the squad room and came to sit on Starsky’s desk, handing him a huge chocolate cigar.
“What’s that for?” Starsky took it, laughing at the absurd-looking candy.
“Since you don’t smoke the real ones, I improvised. This is just between us—Sandra doesn’t want anybody else to know ’til after the wedding.” Hutch was so stupidly happy that he assumed he’d answered Starsky’s question coherently. Detective that he was, Starsky put two and two together.
“She’s not—you mean you’re gonna—”
“You’re almost as articulate as I was, partner,” Hutch said with a laugh.
“All right!” Starsky jumped out of his chair and hugged his partner, yanking him off the edge of the desk. This drew more than one strange stare from around the squad room.
“Would you keep it down a little?” Hutch admonished with only marginal irritation as he freed himself from Starsky’s overjoyed clutch.
“When?” he whispered, still all smiles.
“About seven months from now.”
“Hey, we gotta celebrate!” Starsky said in a breathy whisper.
“I’ve got some reports to put together, buddy. How about…well, I’m taking Sandra out after work—you could come—”
“Oh no. This is your night. Hey, maybe we can knock off a few minutes early tonight and grab a beer at Huggy’s—you gotta tell Huggy.”
“Don’t suppose I’d ever hear the end of that one if I didn’t.”
“Hungry? I’ll split my cigar with ya, Dad,” he muttered to Hutch.
* * * *
Starsky put the frozen dinner in the oven and settled in on his couch with the remote control. Remote controls had to be the best invention in television technology. At least since Hutch had met Sandra, Starsky had finally gotten some really cool presents. The TV was her idea for Christmas, since his old set was getting pretty ratty and he had been griping about wanting a remote for the last several months. She liked Hutch’s romantic ideas, but she was a good balance when it came to not letting him inflict them on his friends for every gift-giving occasion.
Yup, 1981 was a banner year. Hutch got engaged, Hutch is getting married and Hutch and Sandra are having a kid. I got a TV with a remote control. Well, maybe 1982 will be my year, he thought, smiling a little. But it was only April, so 1981 still had plenty of time left on the clock. But then I met my lady, had my chance…until crazy George Prudholm took it away…Starsky tried to confront the feelings of melancholy and, though he hated himself for it, jealousy he had felt watching his partner and his fiancée planning excitedly for the future. Some nights he felt like he’d buried his heart with Terry, along with his hopes for a home and children…of course there’d been Rosey Malone. Another one of your bright ideas, Starsky, he ridiculed himself.
In the old days, Hutch would have been rifling through the refrigerator about now, bitching himself into an apoplectic seizure over the lack of anything edible to prepare for dinner. Since Starsky had nearly died at the hands of Gunther’s hit men, it seemed like he and his partner spent almost all their free time together, a habit formed during Starsky’s recovery. He’d needed a lot of help and Hutch had happily volunteered to take the place of a visiting nurse and do anything Starsky needed done. It had made the adjustment a little harder than it normally would have been, Starsky realized. Marriage and family was going to change things, but that was the normal cycle of life. People change, situations change, and you outgrow some things. The phone rang, shaking Starsky out of his somewhat morose and depressing flight of analysis.
“Hello?” He hit the mute button on the remote, silencing the volume. Nothing responded to his greeting. “Is somebody there?” Still nothing, but some labored breathing came over the line. “Hutch?”
“It’s Sandra…Starsk…please…” The voice was shaking.
“Where are you, Hutch? Talk to me, buddy.”
“The house…Starsk…”
“Are you hurt?”
“No…Sandra…”
“Focus with me here, pal. Are you safe there in the house? Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, buddy. I’m on the way.” He hung up the phone and for a moment was puzzled what to do. If Sandra were injured, Hutch would have snapped into action and done something for her, called an ambulance. He’s good under pressure. He’d be in control. Only time he really lost it was when…Dear God, when Gillian…Starsky flew out the door and down the steps two at a time, leapt into his car and sped down the road toward Hutch’s new house.
The Torino screeched to a halt at the curb in front of the house. There was dim light somewhere inside, casting a glow into the living room which gave the window an eerie yellow aura. Starsky opened the front door and ran in, not even bothering to knock or assess the situation. Hutch was sitting on the floor in the master bedroom, dressed in his sportscoat and tie for his evening out, with the telephone still in his hand. With his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning against the wall, he resembled a very large broken doll.
“Hutch?” Starsky rushed across the unfurnished room to kneel by his partner on the soft blue carpeting. Not wanting to startle him, he spoke slowly and quietly. “Hutch, it’s me, Starsk. Come on, buddy, look at me, huh?” He guided Hutch’s chin so the staring eyes were directed at his face. Hutch blinked a time or two, as if just realizing for the first time that Starsky was there at all. “Where’s Sandra, Hutch?”
“Guest room,” he whispered, finally looking directly into Starsky’s eyes.
“Don’t move. I’ll be right back, partner.”
Starsky wasn’t sure what he processed first: the shocking contrast of red on white, the splotches on the light carpeting…or the single red rose in Sandra’s left hand… Sprawled on her back on the double bed, dressed in her wedding gown and veil, Sandra’s glassy blue eyes stared back at him in an expression of unspeakable terror.
He darted back into the hall, gasping for breath, fighting down a wave of nausea that was more shock-induced than anything else. He’d seen bloody corpses before. But this was Sandra, Hutch’s Sandra…dear God, and Hutch’s child. He willed the hammering in his chest to subside slightly, and taking a deep breath, went back to his partner.
Hutch was sitting Indian-style now, and the phone was back on the hook. Before Starsky had approached him, his head snapped up and he stared wildly at Starsky with a look not unlike the one stamped on Sandra’s lifeless face.
“It’s gonna be okay, babe.” That’s intelligent, Starsky chided himself. His fiancée and unborn child are dead in the other room, but everything’ll be okay…
“But she…the baby…she…” Hutch drew his knees up to his chest and bowed his head, resting it on his folded arms. His shoulders started shaking.
“I’m right here, pal.” Starsky slid his arms around the shaking form and pulled it against his chest. “I’m gonna get the right people over here to do what needs to be done, and then I’m getting you out of here.”
“I never saw…the dress…before…” Hutch muttered in a tear-strained whisper.
“I know it hurts, buddy. Just let it out,” he said, tears streaming down his own face. He didn’t know how much of it was mourning for Sandra, sympathy for Hutch or memories of the horrible pain of those first days after Terry died.
“We have to…call someone…” he choked out.
“I’ll handle everything, buddy.” He reached across Hutch and pulled the phone over closer. “Just stay right there,” he encouraged his partner, who started to move slowly away while Starsky began to make the calls. With the one arm he had around him, Starsky squeezed his partner’s shoulders while he dialed with his free hand. He ordered the coroner’s wagon and crime lab team…just like before. With that much accomplished, he hung up the phone and stood up, urging Hutch to follow suit. He led the other out of the back of the house and into the kitchen, where he took him to the sink and helped him splash some cold water on his face. Starsky grabbed some paper towel from the roll and gently wiped Hutch’s face.
“I can’t believe…she’s…the baby…why…”
“When you got here, was anything…different–out of place?” Starsky was trying to remain sane in an insane situation. Not only had Sandra been murdered, but in her wedding dress, no less…
“I…don’t think so. The door was unlocked, and I came in, and called to her—she told me to meet her here…so we could go celebrate.” Hutch seemed to have pulled himself together momentarily, as Starsky had seen him do before. At least long enough to do what he had to do.
The M.E. was as considerate as possible in his assessment of the situation in front of Hutch. Starsky finally overrode his partner’s objections and planted Hutch on a wrought iron chair on the patio while he dogged the M.E., the crime lab people and did some poking around himself, spending more time in the blood-stained bedroom than he cared to, hoping to see something that would point to the killer, something that Nedloe and Elliot missed in the Nolan case. It wasn’t long before the other team of detectives appeared at the scene.
“Starsky—what’re you doing here?” Jim Nedloe approached him where he stood near the closet of the small bedroom. “Damn it, just like before.”
“That’s Sandra Jerome—Hutch’s fiancée,” Starsky informed him.
“Dear God.” Nedloe approached the body and talked with the coroner, getting the basic time of death information and any other pertinent facts, which Starsky already had. He wanted to be with Hutch, but he also knew that just empty words of consolation wouldn’t sate Hutch for long. He’d want answers, and Starsky felt compelled to get as many as the scene would yield. He watched Nedloe examine the crime scene. He was very thorough, a top-notch investigator who was already building an impressive arrest record with his slightly older partner, Jack Elliot. Jim had suffered a near-fatal shooting earlier in his career tangling with a criminal Starsky and Hutch were tracking. In uniform at the time, Jim had recovered from his wound and made a name for himself as an outstanding patrolman before becoming a detective..
“Same M.O. as the Nolan killing?” Starsky asked.
“Exactly. Where’s Hutch?”
“On the patio. He found her.”
“Aw, Geez.” Jack Elliot announced his arrival upon overhearing that Hutch had been the one to make the initial discovery. A chunky middle-aged man with receding brown hair and a ready smile, Jack was not nearly as energetic or motivated as Jim, but he had a wonderful head on his shoulders and a knack of making the most obscure connections between evidence to string a case together. “Go take care of him. We’ll take it from here, Starsky.”
“Thanks.” Starsky started out of the room. “I want to be part of this. I know it’s yours, but I want to be part of nailing this son of a bitch.”
“We’ll keep you posted, Starsky—every step of the way,” Jack responded, and Jim nodded his reassurance.
“Okay.” Starsky made his way through the house and located his partner right where he’d left him on the patio out back. “Come on, pal, time to go home.” He crouched by Hutch’s chair, feeling horrible pangs of deja vu, remembering that glassy look of devastation after all the hoopla of avenging Gillian had died. “Hutch, come on. I’ll take ya home.”
“I am home.” Hutch finally looked around at the little patio, the back of the house with the light shining in the kitchen window…Sandra should be there, with our kids, and I should be out here grilling steaks for dinner…
“You’re comin’ home with me, partner. Come on.” Starsky straightened up and tugged at Hutch’s arm. The other finally moved out of the chair, and was glad to put an arm around Starsky’s shoulders as the other man’s arm slipped around his waist. “We’ll go ’round the side of the house. Stay out of the way of things.”
“Sandra—she’s gone?” Hutch stopped dead in his tracks. “God, Starsky, I just sat out there while they took her away!” he moaned miserably.
“Hutch, listen to me. There’s no way you want to remember Sandra like that. You’ll have a chance to see her again, when she’s…at the funeral home. I don’t think the coroner’s people have moved her yet, but she wouldn’t want you to have that memory of her. Just come with me, okay, babe?”
“I have to call her parents.” The thought seemed to chill Hutch to the bone, almost as badly as the death itself.
“You want me to do it?”
“No, I should.”
“We’ll call from my place. Let’s go home, buddy.”
“Okay.” Hutch leaned into his partner as they made their way to the car.
* * * *
Sandra’s parents were predictably horrified and grief-stricken at Hutch’s call. Starsky had offered to leave his partner alone to talk with them, but Hutch had wanted him there, so Starsky took up residence on the couch next to Hutch, just offering the quiet moral support of being there while the call was made.
Hutch finally let the phone drop back on its hook and leaned back on the couch. “I should’ve gone over there.”
“No you shouldn’t. All that would’ve done was make it hard on all three of you. This gives them their time to grieve, to cope with it, and it gives you some time before you feel like you have to be strong for someone else.”
“I…wanted…that baby, Starsk…so much,” he choked out, turning toward his partner. Starsky slid closer and pulled Hutch into his arms.
“I know. This is gonna sound silly, but so did I.” Starsky found himself rocking a little, occasionally patting his friend’s back.
“I…I can’t believe what she…how she…looked…so pale…and…and scared.” He cried against Starsky’s shoulder for long seconds until he spoke again. “If I don’t have her…I don’t know if…I don’t think I want to…”
“I know how you feel right now, babe. I’ve been there. Terry wasn’t expecting, so I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that I know how that feels, because I don’t. But when she died, part of me did too, and I didn’t want to go on living at all. I’d’a probably thanked old Prudholm if he’d plugged me one in the head later that day and gotten it over with.”
“So what changed?” Hutch was sniffling a little now, trying to pull himself together.
“You were there for me the whole time—on call 24 hours a day if you weren’t actually here. All I had to do was pick up the phone and sound a little whiny and you’d be over in five minutes. Even if it was three in the morning.” That brought a little chuckle from Hutch. Starsky was smiling at the memory of how many times his bleary-eyed, half sleeping partner had driven over and slept the rest of the night at his apartment, or propped his eyelids open and listened while Starsky poured out his grief or his “what ifs”…or just held him when he felt too miserable to do anything but sit there and cry.
“There’s nothin’ and nobody that can step in for Sandra. She was your lady, and that was your kid, and I know that can’t just be ‘fixed.’ But I’m right here for the duration, babe. For every ugly sleepless night, every time you just feel rotten and want to talk—anytime, anything you need…I’m here. You hear me?” He drew back his head to look down at the blond hair pressed against his shoulder. It moved a little with a nod. “Good. You wanta get outta those fancy threads and into an old robe? Come on, we’re gonna get you at least comfortable.” He urged Hutch to straighten up, which he finally did. He regarded Starsky through puffy red eyes and somehow managed a slight smile.
“One of your ratty old robes, huh?” He sniffed loudly and wiped at his eyes.
“I don’t have ‘ratty old robes,’” Starsky repeated, with an intentionally exaggerated indignation. “Besides, you probably have one stuffed in my closet somewhere. Come on, ya big lug.”
Starsky stood and pulled Hutch up by the arm, quickly winding an arm around his waist. Hutch flopped one around Starsky’s shoulders and squeezed, seeming relieved that Starsky was going to stick with him to dig out a robe and get him out of the new sportscoat and tie Sandra had picked out for him a week earlier. Starsky deposited Hutch on the foot of the bed while he rifled through his closet.
“See, I told ya there’d be one in here.” Starsky emerged from his closet exploration with a white terry cloth robe. He prodded Hutch to start shedding the dress clothes, and soon had him in pajamas and the robe.
“I’m not sleepy, Starsk.” Hutch seemed almost dazed as he sat on the foot of Starsky’s bed while the other neatly hung the dress clothes in his closet.
“I know. But there’s no harm in relaxin’ a little.”
“I’m cold.” Hutch put an extraordinary emphasis on the word, almost making Starsky feel the chill himself. Maybe having to run out and hunt down Prudholm was better than having time to let it sink in right away. And if I had seen Terry the way Hutch saw Sandra…maybe I’d’a gone nuts right then. Starsky didn’t respond verbally to the statement. Instead, he pulled down a bundle from the top shelf of his closet, the rolled up quilt that had helped dispel the shivers of his last bad flu bug.
“Come on, buddy. We’ll get you bundled up on the couch and I’ll make some cocoa.”
“Starsk, I don’t know what to do.” Hutch looked up at him pleadingly. “I—I didn’t even know…what it was…” Starsky was infinitely grateful at that moment for their unspoken rapport, and for his ability to read his partner’s heart as well as his mind.
“I think we should pick out something special—maybe one of those little white fancy pillows with some flowers, and maybe it could say something on it—you know, something just for the baby to put up there with Sandra.”
“That…that’s what I meant…but I didn’t know what…” Hutch shook his head miserably and looked down at the floor. “That’s perfect,” he murmured.
“Hey,” Starsky said softly, kneeling in front of Hutch and coaxing his face upward a little with a gentle finger under his chin, “me and thee, remember, buddy? You don’t have to be in control of this one, and you don’t have to think of everything. I’m gonna be right here every step of the way.”
“They want me to help with the arrangements tomorrow. I had to tell them we have to wait…oh, God, Starsky…I had to tell her mother we had to wait for the autopsy. I can’t even think about—”
“You’re right, you can’t think about that. It has to be done. You and I both know that. If we’re gonna catch that bastard, it’s the only way Sandra can communicate with us to help us find her killer. Try to think about it that way.”
“I will.” Hutch nodded. “It just…bothers me so much… that nobody is going to mention my son or my daughter because Sandra hadn’t had time to have the baby yet!” The sentence built to its crescendo, and there was as much anger as there was grief in it.
“We’re gonna mention that little Hutchinson, partner. Everybody’s gonna mourn that little baby, because we’re gonna make sure nobody forgets, okay?”
“Elizabeth Marie or David Michael,” Hutch murmured.
“What?” Starsky thought he must be reciting baby names, but the thought that not just his first, but his middle name as well, would go to Hutch’s son stunned him.
“If it was a girl, Sandra wanted to name her after her grandmother. If it was a boy, well, then I got to pick.”
“I—I don’t know what to say, Hutch. I mean, I always kinda figured we’d end up namin’ our boys after each other somehow—but the whole shootin’ match? First and middle?” He was happy to see Hutch actually chuckle a little.
“The whole shootin’ match, buddy,” Hutch replied softly.
Starsky made cocoa for both of them, and they sat on the couch, talking intermittently, staring at an old western that droned on the TV in the background. It was essentially a replay of the night Starsky had come back to this apartment, after Terry’s death, in enormous pain but yet still in shock, not fully embracing the horror of what had happened. Hutch talked, sipped at his cocoa, snuggled into the folds of the comforter, but didn’t seem to be functioning completely. When Starsky detected the drowsiness that might afford his partner a few hours’ sleep, he piled a couple of pillows on his lap and encouraged him to rest his head there. Strangely enough, Hutch didn’t argue or hesitate. He curled up on the couch, his head cushioned by the pillows on Starsky’s lap and kept warm by the quilt. Starsky rested one arm on Hutch’s, and leaned back into the cushions himself, hoping to share the blanket of unconsciousness that seemed to be giving Hutch a short break from his grief, and hopefully from the image of Sandra’s body. Thinking his partner was asleep, the small voice that broke the silence startled him.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Hutch said in a choked whisper.
“Always will be, buddy.” Starsky rubbed his hand gently along Hutch’s arm. “Try to rest now. Get some sleep. I’m right here.”
CHAPTER 2
You keep me standing tall,
You help me through it all,
I’m always strong when you’re beside me,
I have always needed you.
I could never make it alone…
The next few days were a blur of funeral arrangements and long sad gatherings. Hutch’s parents had declined to attend the funeral, much to Starsky’s surprise, since they’d planned to be at the wedding the following Saturday anyway. Hutch dealt with the long days at the funeral home and the funeral itself with his usual stoicism and strength. Of course, he kept Starsky no more than a whisper away throughout most of the proceedings. His partner was his source of strength and solace, as Sandra’s parents were too devastated to console anyone, and Hutch was, to some extent, mourning his own parents’ decision not to come for the funeral. He felt, in an ironic sort of way, it would have been their last chance to meet Sandra.
Hutch put the house up for sale as soon as the bedroom was cleaned and the restriction lifted from it as a crime scene. Starsky had rounded up a couple other guys from the department to clean up the bedroom in question, and within a couple of weeks, another young couple had made an offer on the house. Hutch sold the crib and other nursery furnishings with the house.
Dobey was convinced to approve a brief leave of absence for both detectives. Despite his passion to work the case, Hutch was in no shape to concentrate on his work and finally accepted he needed some time to recover. Dobey knew very well after all the years he’d watched the two of them cope with just about every conceivable crisis, Hutch wouldn’t get any better without Starsky, so both detectives were sent packing.
To Hutch’s stunned amazement, it was Starsky’s idea to rent a cabin on a lake for a week, getting completely away from civilization. Of course, the cabin Starsky chose boasted all the modern conveniences and frontage on a private beach. Hutch was strongly suspicious of the story that Starsky concocted of having gotten a great deal from a friend of a friend on the rent. He figured it was more likely his partner had taken the level on his savings down by quite a bit to make this little getaway happen. Too drained to worry about who paid for it or what it might be costing, Hutch just settled for appreciating the peace, quiet and companionship of his best friend he figured the trip would provide.
It was a small, one floor house with two bedrooms, a bathroom, living room, kitchen, and a porch that extended the full length of the front of the house and continued down the side, overlooking the beach and the water. Arriving late afternoon, Starsky decided they should grill the steaks they brought and have dinner on the porch. In the perfect, mild, sunny weather, Hutch couldn’t argue with that idea, even if everything he did seemed to hurt because he was doing it without Sandra. He helped to haul in the suitcases and supplies, then sat on the porch with a beer in his hand while Starsky worked on grilling the steaks at the foot of the three steps which led to the yard, which eventually sloped down a grassy hill to the sand and water.
“So, we gonna try a little fishin’ tomorrow?” Starsky asked, startling his partner.
“Fishing? You hate getting up early and sitting in a boat. You said so yourself.”
“I was pretty good at it up at Pine Lake—remember all those trout I caught the morning we left?”
“You never let me forget it,” Hutch retorted, taking a drink out of the beer can.
“You’re always rubbin’ my nose in what a great outdoorsman you are and how I don’t know a raccoon from a grizzly, so I gotta get my revenge somehow,” Starsky answered, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth.
“Starsk, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but I—”
“Then shut up and let me do it.” Starsky’s smile took the harshness out of the words. “Ya never know—it might work.”
“Okay. We’ll go fishing tomorrow,” Hutch replied through a half-hearted smile.
Dinner was a pleasant experience in terms of food and surroundings, but Hutch still regretted not being able to give Starsky the enthusiastic response all his efforts deserved. The steaks were perfect, the wine excellent, and Starsky even was trying his best to discuss the finer points of fishing or to draw Hutch out to discuss anything he might find interesting. The conversation was still spotty, and Hutch felt guilty that he was still miserable despite the fact that Starsky had done all but don a straw hat and cane and dance across the porch to make him smile. Of course, Starsky had resorted to a straw hat routine in the past, so Hutch would not have been surprised to see it make its return.
“So, you feel ready to talk about the case now?” Starsky asked, pouring more wine for both of them.
“What?”
“Sandra’s case. You feel like talking about it?”
“I don’t know where to start.” Hutch leaned back in the chair. “My brain’s so foggy I can’t remember my own name half the time.”
“Maybe working on the case’ll help. Look, I know not much of anything makes a difference to ya right now, and I don’t blame you at all, buddy. I know how it feels to not care about anything for a long time. To hurt so much that you’d just like to go to sleep and never come to so you didn’t have to get up and face another day of it.” Starsky paused as he noticed Hutch’s eyes misting again. Depressing him more hadn’t been the goal. “What I’m drivin’ at is that maybe, just maybe, if you feel like you’re doin’ somethin’ to help Sandra, you’ll feel better.”
“You’re probably right,” Hutch responded quietly.
“Then let’s take the wine and go sit on the beach and start talkin’ this over like detectives. And if it gets too heavy for you, we’ll knock it off and come back here and find something stupid on the tube we can fall asleep in front of. Whaddya say?”
“I say grab the wine and let’s go.”
The water was rolling languidly up to the beach, grasping the shoreline, then sliding back again. The moon highlighted the little ripples and waves, and a mild breeze carried the scent of the water to the two solitary figures who sat in the sand, backs supported by two beach chairs, sipping wine and staring out at the vast expanse of water and night in front of them. Though they were going to talk about Sandra and the case, they had done precious little talking about anything since settling into their comfortable seats.
For his part, Hutch was relaxing, able to shut out the misery in a moment of fantasy. He and Starsky were just taking a vacation together, like they’d done so many other times. Sandra wasn’t dead. She just…wasn’t here…But that was a dangerous flight of fancy, and the crash would be too painful if he soared any higher with it. He looked over at Starsky, patient and uncharacteristically quiet, as if he knew exactly when to speak and when to let the silence speak for itself. Could I have found such solace sitting out here with Sandra if you were dead? Sometimes I think I breathe and you breathe with me…you think with me, function with me, and I with you. How does it work to cut that in half? Can it ever work? Where would I go when everything crashed around my ears? When Sandra died, I knew just where to go. Would I know that if you were gone? Would going to Sandra have healed that wound? Or to anyone else?
“Beautiful night,” Starsky said quietly.
“Very.” You knew I wanted to hear your voice right then, didn’t you? That I was getting too lonely sitting here in my own space… “After we talked to Mrs. Nolan, I went over to see Sandra—took her some flowers, and she told me…showed me the nursery.”
“When were you in the house last—before that, I mean?” Starsky sipped his wine again.
“The morning before.” Hutch paused. “We’ve been over all this with Nedloe and Elliot.”
“And now we’re goin’ over it. So Sandra could have done the nursery any time the day before, or before you showed up to see her.”
“I s’pose.”
“I only went into the living room and kitchen when I got there to wait for the electrician.” Starsky paused. “It’s weird though. She took me up on it awfully fast when I offered to leave. But I imagine that could have been because she didn’t want me somehow finding out about the nursery before you did. A delivery truck showed up right when I left.”
“How did she seem?” Hutch asked, shifting a little in his chair to have eye contact with his partner.
“Fine. She was a little nervous, but okay.”
“Yeah, but that could have been waiting for the nursery stuff to be delivered—you’re right.”
“We know there was no forced entry. She had to let the person in. She usually kept the door locked when she was there alone, didn’t she?”
“Yes. She was always careful about things like that.”
“So who was on her agenda for that day? You said she had a bunch of stuff to do that her mother set up.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Hutch was pensive a moment. “God, Starsk, I didn’t even listen to her. I just tuned her out when she told me everything she’d be doing all day…”
“Hey, come on,” Starsky said gently, laying a hand on Hutch’s arm. He could tell his partner was getting choked up, and was ready to beat himself up again for some created transgression against the woman he loved. “We’re supposed to tune women out when they go off like that. She’d’a thought somethin’ was wrong with you if you didn’t.” Starsky was relieved to see him smile a little. “How organized is her mother?”
“What?”
“Would her mother be organized enough to keep one of those day planners—you know, a calendar book with all the ‘to do’ lists in it?”
“I know she kept close track of all the plans, so maybe.”
“What I’m driving at is that brides come into contact with a whole slew of people if they’re planning a big wedding—caterers, florists, seamstresses, travel agents, and in Sandra’s case, we can add decorators, furniture salespeople, and delivery people, service people, new neighbors—a whole cast of extra people in her life—any one of whom she might let in without worrying. And someone could use any one of a number of cover stories to get her to open the door. The Nolan girl was a bride-to-be also—she was probably in contact with the same types of people. I was just thinking we could start with what her mother recalls being on the docket for the day it happened. Then we can compare that along with all the other wedding planning stuff she did to the Nolan girl’s schedule and contacts before her death.”
“Good thinking. If I weren’t so spaced out, I might be able to think like that.” Hutch drained his wine glass and refilled it.
“Hutch, give it some time. It’s only been a few weeks.” Starsky stared out at the water a moment, then continued, still watching the gentle motion of the waves. “When Terry died, you know I was a mess for a long time. I mean, I pulled it together enough to go back to work, but even that took me close to a month. I was always amazed Dobey put up with me bein’ gone so long.”
“He’s putting up with me now, so I guess you broke him in right,” Hutch replied, grinning a little. Only he and Starsky could joke that way and have the other not take any exception to it.
“Nothing registered, ya know? I mean, I heard people talkin’ to me, and they were all trying to be so nice and understanding…but none of it meant a damn thing to me. All I knew was that just…breathin’ hurt, made me feel bad. My mind was a blob of mush. I think you were probably the only person who wanted to spend more than five minutes with me. I guess you were probably the only person I would have let in.”
“So when did it get better? I mean, I’ve been down this road with Gillian. I know it was hard to get past that, but this is…different somehow.”
“She was gonna be your wife. And then there’s Elizabeth…” Starsky had never referred to Hutch’s ill-fated child as “the baby” or “it” once the coroner had confirmed the fetus was female. She had a name, and he always used it. “Man, can you picture that poor kid tryin’ to date anybody? With two old cops screening all her boyfriends?”
“Who said anything about letting her date?” Hutch replied, chuckling a little.
“There’ll be another chance, buddy,” Starsky said quietly. “You deserve to have that. You should have at least twelve little Hutchinsons.”
“Twelve?” The absurdity of the number helped Hutch speak past the massive, painful lump in his throat. Leave it to Starsky to mix heavy emotion with exaggeration.
“Some people ought to have lots of kids. I think, if you want kids, you ought to have a whole house full of ’em.” Starsky was silent a moment. “I think you’d be the best dad a kid could ask for.” Making his partner cry was the last thing Starsky had planned on, but that’s what he accomplished. Hutch lost his tenuous grip on his emotions, and was glad when Starsky bridged the small distance between them, deserting his beach chair and kneeling next to Hutch. The familiar solace of the embrace calmed him, like it always did. “Sorry to upset you, babe. That was the last thing I wanted to do.” Starsky rested his chin on top of Hutch’s head and squeezed a little tighter.
“Not…you,” Hutch managed. “I’m sorry… It’s just…so hard…”
“I know. Just let it go, buddy. Nobody here but me and thee and the ocean…and a coupla those funny little crabs that have been eye-ballin’ our toes for the last half hour.” Starsky felt the shaking of tears transform into a little laughter. “Hey, you’re doin’ fine to the rest of the world, pal. You handled the house deal, you’ve been supportive to her family while they moved all her stuff out of her apartment—you’ve held up great. Only difference is, you don’t haveta hold up with me. So don’t, okay?” Starsky crouched there quietly for a few minutes, just holding his partner.
“I don’t think I want to go through this again,” Hutch stated softly.
“Don’t think anybody’d wanna go through it the first time, buddy. But with love comes risk. And livin’ your whole life preventing gettin’ hurt…you’d never have any love.”
“Maybe that’s easier.” Hutch straightened up and moved away from Starsky. He looked more exhausted than Starsky could remember seeing him in a long time.
“Can you honestly say you wish you’d never laid eyes on Sandra?”
“It’s not that I can say something like that. But it just gets real tiresome hurting like this. Every time I think it’s the real thing, and I…I take that leap of faith—I end up face down in the sewer.” Hutch leaned back in his chair, and Starsky noted the location of the two small crabs he’d mentioned to his partner. Satisfied one wasn’t lurking in the beach chair, he returned to it. “When you were shot…”
“But I lived, Hutch. No need to dredge up all that misery again, pal.”
“When you were shot, and then no one thought…no one expected you to live through it…I thought right then, ‘I’ve made up my mind, this is it. I’m going to have to lose him and live through that. But I’m not going to ever…not again.”’
“Not going to ever what?” Starsky asked.
“Give somebody else a piece of my soul,” Hutch replied succinctly, staring straight ahead, talking more to himself than Starsky.
“Are you saying if you had it to do over again, you wouldn’t be partners? Or friends?” Starsky felt pierced by the idea that Hutch would be able to picture voluntarily giving up their friendship, even if it was by some cosmic impossibility of turning back time.
“Sandra got a piece of my heart and soul, and now that she’s dead, it won’t ever come back.”
“Not that piece, no. But you’ve still got enough to keep you goin’.”
“No, we’ve got enough.” Hutch turned again to face Starsky, who was by now losing track of the convoluted thought patterns. “See, Starsk, as I was sitting here, I was trying to picture sitting here with Sandra, dealing with your death…and that scared the hell out of me. That nightmare/fantasy was bad enough to make me want reality again, which, God knows, sucks at the moment.” Hutch took a deep breath and released it. “When everything shatters, I bring the mess to you and we rebuild it somehow. When you were in the hospital, I brought you those pieces but you couldn’t help put them together, and I was just all over the place…and I didn’t give a damn what happened if I could just nail whoever killed you. All that was gonna be left was the darkness…the solitude…” Hutch shook his head slowly. “Nothingness…” Hutch reached for the wine bottle, perplexed when he found it empty. “I just wonder why it’s so bad to love somebody…why it seems like you get punished for it in the end.”
“We haven’t ended yet, buddy.” Starsky was still reeling a bit from the revelation of how much his partner depended on him. He’d always felt that he was the one who laid all his problems and fears at Hutch’s feet and waited for his partner to “fix it.” “If you were gonna get punished for having me for a friend, I’d’a never come outta that cardiac arrest,” he finally said. “Do you think there’s some big cosmic plan to punish you? Or did you just have tragic bad luck in a couple of major things in your life?”
“You think I’m developing a persecution complex, huh?” Hutch asked, smirking a little.
“Maybe a small one,” Starsky responded. “Love’s a funny thing, ya know? I mean, it rips your guts into little pieces one minute and then in another form it comes back and glues them back together again. I don’t think I’d wanna give up the good stuff to avoid the bad stuff.”
“Sometimes I’m just tired, Starsk. Abby, Gillian, now Sandra…you invest so much and get nothing in the end.”
“Abby left, so that’s a fair comparison. But Gillian and Sandra? That’d be like me sayin’ I invested all that love in Terry and got nothin’ back. It wasn’t like the love didn’t matter, or that she didn’t want me, but it just…I guess that’s a lousy comparison too, because I can honestly say I wish I’d never met her. It’s because of me she’s dead.”
“Starsk,” Hutch said softly, not knowing what else to say. After all these years, you still blame yourself.
“I’m not going to go over all that again. I can’t help how I feel about it. That’s just the way it is. But I guess my point is that you can’t look at someone’s death as a punishment for loving them or be afraid to ever reach out to anyone else because of it.”
“And you can’t blame yourself because of what some nut does, or because of a clerical error that let him go free to do it.”
“But I was the fatal connection. Prudholm wouldn’t have shot Terry if she’d never met me.” Starsky leaned back in the chair and stared up at the stars, blinking away a little moisture from his eyes. “It doesn’t make it necessarily my fault, but it still makes me the ultimate cause.” Starsky looked over at his partner. “This isn’t about me, buddy.”
“When did you start…caring again? About living, breathing…anything?”
“It was a progression. The cases we worked on right after—they were kind of a fog. I think the first good time I had was when we went undercover doing that stupid western. I think it was the first time I felt really excited about anything. As far as how long it takes to heal—well, that’s another whole story. When it happens, I’ll let you know.”
“Wine’s gone,” Hutch lamented, tipping the bottle again.
“Yeah, well…” Starsky was quiet a minute. “It’s getting cold out here anyway. You wanna go back up to the house, break out another bottle and start making some lists?”
“Lists?”
“Yeah, lists of people Sandra had contacts with.” Starsky smiled slightly. “I kinda made copies of the Nolan file and brought it along.”
“You ‘kinda made copies’?” Hutch asked, returning the grin.
“You know, the kind you make after hours and smuggle out under your jacket?”
“Oh, those,” Hutch replied, smiling affectionately at Starsky.
“Well, we sure got some good weather, anyway.” Starsky commented as he led the way back toward the house, empty wine bottle and glasses in hand.
“Starsk?”
“What?”
“Maybe I was wrong about it not bein’ worth the risk.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I was right an’ you were all wet.” Starsky flopped an arm over his partner’s shoulders with a laugh. “You just never admit it.”
* * * *
Starsky watched the solitary figure walk along the shore, stopping occasionally to pick up a shell or stone and toss it into the ocean. Hutch sometimes needed these moments to collect his thoughts, and while he had made it perfectly clear that Starsky was not only wanted there, but indispensible, he still needed some time to himself. For his part, Starsky would sit inside the bedroom window that overlooked the ocean and watch him, wanting to be ready to spring out the door and be there if Hutch showed the slightest sign of needing him. The nights had been difficult…nightmares of the murder scene, of bizarre nightmarish weddings with blood-spattered brides, and the ghost-cries of an unborn child were all among the demons that danced around in his partner’s sleeping mind. What happened to Terry was ghastly and unthinkable, but if I had walked in and seen her like that, known she was going to have our child and then lost both of them…I might have gone insane right there, on the spot. He watched Hutch pause and stare out into the water for a long moment, and wished he could give him a rest. God, please, do the impossible: give me his grief, and his terror, and his nightmares for just a few hours…just so he can be free of it for awhile, before it drives him crazy. Watching him suffer like this…it’s gonna drive me crazy before it gets him anyway…
Starsky contacted Jim Nedloe near the end of their time at the cabin to discuss the possibility with him of them working on the case as a team. Though it would ultimately need Dobey’s approval, Starsky didn’t want a strain to exist with the other team by going over their heads to make the request. Both Nedloe and Elliot were receptive to the idea, at the end of their ropes with the cases that seemed to yield no leads. Starsky outlined his and Hutch’s game plan, and though much of it would be a repeat of what had already been done, the other detectives were willing to let Starsky and Hutch have their go at it.
Both Sandra’s parents and Mrs. Nolan happily cooperated with the additional questioning, listing every detail they remembered on the women’s lives, schedules and wedding plans.
What time wasn’t spent on the phone taking laborious notes was spent comparing those notes to locate any overlapping contacts or patterns. They found two caterers, a florist and a dress shop where both women had either visited or invited representatives to visit them. Sandra’s expanded list of furniture stores, decorators and other service people was unique to her, so it was put on hold for the time being.
By the time a week was over, Hutch was chomping at the bit to go back to town and work on the case. Starsky was delighted at his partner’s enthusiasm and his ability to take a hold of the investigation. He was thinking more rationally and coolly, raring to follow up the somewhat meager leads they’d cultivated by their joint research efforts.
Starsky finished packing the car while Hutch made one last walk through the house to be sure everything was back in order.
“Think Minnie’ll have that stuff pulled for us when we get back?” Hutch asked, hurrying down the front steps and walking toward the car.
“Probably. She was real anxious to help out.”
“Should be a lot of fun—reading about every sicko in Southern California who likes to use knives on women.” He slid into the passenger seat of the Torino.
“Well, if we find one that overlaps with Sandra or Madeleine Nolan…”
“Hey, whatever it takes.” Hutch settled into the seat for the ride back to town as Starsky began the journey through the trees back to the main road. “By the way, thanks for hanging around up here this week. I know a cabin in the woods wouldn’t be your first choice.”
“Woods that lead to a beach and a cabin with all the conveniences—I can live with that. It’s those lean-to’s in the middle of God-knows-where I don’t like.”
“Lean-to’s? Don’t let Dobey hear you say that.” Hutch was thinking back of their ill-fated vacation at the Dobey cabin a few years earlier.
“Yeah, well, it’s just a glorified cookie jar for the neighborhood bears,” Starsky grumbled as he steered the car onto the paved road that would carry them back to town.
“Oh, come on, Starsk. It’s not like you even saw a bear on that trip.”
“That’s because we had the presence of mind to leave when he announced himself.”
“Yeah. You tried to get in the car with your hip waders on yet.”
“Like you’d’a noticed a little water on the seats of that rat trap you were driving.”
“That ‘rat trap’ was a good car, Starsk. A damn good car.” Hutch was not going to allow the tattered LTD Starsky had bought him to replace its predecessor, totaled in the tumble down the side of a mountain, to be maligned. The fact it was a gift, and signified Starsky’s total acceptance and indulgence of Hutch’s diametrically opposite taste in cars had made it that much harder to see it destroyed—even if it was, in Starsky’s words, a mercy killing.
“Yeah, well, it’s not like it gettin’ blown up solved anything. That critter you call a car now should have been scrapped five years ago.”
“What about this monster? Starsky, you keep patching this up like Dr. Frankenstein sewed up his monster. Eventually, you’re going to step on the gas in a chase and it’s gonna roll over and die.”
“You have the nerve to insult my car? Sandra told you that thing of yours was about due to have its plug pulled.” Starsky immediately regretted the remark, though he had been laughing at the memory of the reaction Sandra’s remark had elicited from her fiancé at the time. He held his breath while it registered with Hutch.
“You two always ganged up on me about my car. Let me give you a hint, buddy—she didn’t like yours, either.” Hutch was grinning, obviously enjoying bringing Sandra into the conversation in a pleasant way for a change.
“Oh, yeah? I’ll have you know she told me that this was going to be a classic someday.”
“That was her polite way of saying you were driving a candy apple red dinosaur.”
“Dinosaur? This dinosaur is still hauling your sorry ass all over the freakin’ map and it doesn’t break down every other day, either.”
“The grey Mercury has been perfectly dependable and you know it.” And so the battle raged, business as usual, for the next few miles.
* * * *
Minnie had done her homework, and once Dobey was safely home for the night, Starsky and Hutch started the arduous task of wading through the files. Their leave was due to end the following Monday, so this Wednesday night saw them plowing efficiently through the information while the captain wasn’t there to observe that they were working on the case right along with Nedloe and Elliot without his knowledge or approval.
“I’m not seeing any connections.” Starsky leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on the desk. “I guess this was a waste of time, retracing Nedloe and Elliot’s steps.”
“I hate to admit defeat, but I can’t find a single tie to Sandra, or even to Madeleine Nolan. By the time I screened out the ones that were dead or incarcerated…”
“Yeah, Minnie must be slipping. I told her to take those out.”
“Well, Dobey’s got a couple of major manhunts going on with that gang who’re knocking over the liquor stores and that other pervert that’s snatching little girls out of the parks. She probably has been pulling files on every conceivable type of pervert for days now. Think we should call it a night?” Hutch piled up the thick stack of files.
“Probably. I’ve got a list of living weirdos who aren’t in the slammer at the moment, so I guess we can compare notes with Jim and run those down tomorrow.” Starsky yawned and stretched back in his chair. “How’re you doin’, buddy?”
“I’m real glad we’re working on this case,” Hutch replied quietly.
“Yeah. Going after Prudholm helped, even though it was all over with quickly. Gave me something positive to do for Terry.” Starsky watched his partner stand and stretch, trying to alleviate the stiffness in his back. “Come on, partner. Let’s head for home. You wanna come over and watch a ball game?”
“At this hour?” Hutch checked his watch.
“My landlord just got a satellite dish, remember? They’re playin’ somethin’ somewhere in the world right now.” Starsky pulled on his jacket and headed toward the door.
“Starsk, you really don’t have to babysit me. I’ll be all right.”
“Who’s babysittin’ you? All I’d do if you weren’t here is go home and watch it by myself, and that’s no fun. Who would I fight with for the remote?”
“Okay, okay. Sounds like a good idea,” Hutch agreed, smiling. He tossed his jacket over his shoulder and walked through the door Starsky held for him.
* * * *
“Watching the ball game” finally entailed watching a tape delay version of a Japanese baseball game, splitting a pizza—and of course, fighting over the remote. It had become more ritual than actual battle, with Hutch inflicting at least one cultural program on his partner during their multinational satellite cable viewing experience. Starsky, for his part, could usually locate some tacky B-movie that was more than adequate revenge. Since the satellite dish had been installed and the rent, of course, adjusted accordingly, Hutch was amazed his partner ever left the couch. He frequently warned Starsky not to overtax his trigger finger on the remote control buttons.
Hutch won the coin toss for the shower, and went into the bathroom first while Starsky cleared up the pizza remains and the beer cans. It was almost three in the morning, and they did hope to get a reasonable start on following up on their list of degenerates the next day.
“I’m done,” Hutch announced as he wandered into Starsky’s room, wearing one of his partner’s old robes.
“You’re not gettin’ the bed, so don’t get comfortable,” Starsky shot back with a little grin on his face.
“I’m lookin’ for those old pajamas I had here—after you got home from the hospital—I never did find those things.”
“Try the bottom drawer of the dresser, and do some digging. I’ve got lots of old stuff in there.” Starsky headed for the bathroom himself, but stopped short when he saw his partner kneeling, motionless, in front of the dresser, clutching something in his hands. “Hutch? You okay?” He approached Hutch and squatted next to him. His partner was holding a small, yellow stuffed rabbit with big blue plastic eyes.
“What…is this?” Hutch looked up at him through the eyes of fresh grief.
“Aw, Hutch, I’m sorry. I forgot about that thing.” Starsky sighed and rested a hand on Hutch’s shoulder. “I bought it the night—right after you told me about—”
“Elizabeth? This was for her?”
“Well, yeah. I know it’s silly, but I was so excited about it that I wanted to do something. So after we left Huggy’s, I stopped to pick up some stuff at the drugstore, and I saw this. I stashed it in the drawer after… I didn’t remember it was in there.”
“You mind if I keep it?” Hutch asked, smiling, much to his partner’s surprise.
“Sure, if you want.”
“You see, buddy, it’s the only thing in this whole world that I have left that belonged to my daughter.” Hutch was still smiling, examining the little stuffed toy with great interest. It almost fit in just one of his hands, and when he squeezed it, a little mechanical voice said “I love you.” He laughed out loud.
“That’s what really got me,” Starsky said, smiling and slumping into a sitting position against the foot of his bed. “They had this bin of stuffed toys up near the front of the store, and I was digging around in it, and when I pulled this one out, I guess I squeezed it a little harder than the others, because it talked.” Starsky was silent a moment, and Hutch joined him, sitting there against the foot of the bed, still holding the rabbit. “It’s not even a tenth as important or as big as what you’re feelin’, buddy, but I was really lookin’ forward to that kid of yours. Boy or a girl, it didn’t matter. I just couldn’t wait to spoil her rotten.”
“Yeah, and leave Sandra and me with an impossible behavior problem, right?” Hutch asked, grinning a little.
“Hey, that’s what one of my teachers called me one time, and you manage to deal with me. Nah, Elizabeth would’ve just gotten a little of her Uncle Dave’s spirit, that’s all.”
“God help her,” Hutch said with a laugh. “Thanks.”
“Oh, hey, don’t mention it.”
“I wasn’t exactly talking about the rabbit, Starsk. Everyone has been great about extending their sympathies about Sandra—I have a big pile of cards at home offering condolences on the loss of my fiancee. I guess Elizabeth isn’t considered to be something as significant as my daughter because she wasn’t living outside her mother yet. But from the moment Sandra told me we were going to have a baby, I loved that kid, and I started having plans for her in my mind—I could picture the whole thing, you know?” Hutch shook his head. “But you understood that.”
“Yeah, ’cause I was doin’ the same thing. I was already figuring out how much babysitting I could volunteer for without overextending my welcome in your house.” Starsky laughed a little. “I don’t know the first thing about babies or diapers or anything, so I’d’a probably been the world’s worst babysitter.”
“But you would have loved her like your own, and you can’t pay the most qualified person in the world enough to make them do that. You can teach anybody how to change a diaper.”
“Oh yeah?”
“So I’ve been told,” Hutch replied, smiling a little sadly.
“We better get some sleep, pal.” Starsky yawned. “I gotta hose down. If you can’t find the old pajamas, just take something of mine.” Starsky pulled himself up and headed into the bathroom.
When he came out, Hutch was asleep on the couch, under the throw, still holding the rabbit. Starsky chuckled softly at the sight of his partner actually sleeping with a stuffed animal. Under any other circumstances, it would have been fodder for at least a full year of teasing. This moment will never be mentioned again, Starsky decided as he pulled the throw a little further up to include Hutch’s shoulder and slipped quietly into his room.
* * * *
Hutch had progressed pretty well in the past month, in Starsky’s humble opinion. He’d taken a hold of the investigation, he was generally in a pretty fair mood. There was no missing the fact that he was still in enormous pain over Sandra’s death, but that certainly wasn’t surprising. They’d loved each other like crazy, and missing the opportunity for a family, yet again, was a body blow. Starsky realized he had been planning to ride Hutch’s coattails, spending as much time with his kids as he could without being thrown out of the family home. He laughed at the comparison his mind was making with women and their biological clocks.
As he slid into bed, he reached the conclusion they still had enough good years left in them to have all that. He flopped on his back and stared at the ceiling. So why don’t I care enough to settle down with somebody? Why do I get to a point in a relationship, think about Terry and what we were like, and then wriggle out of it before I have to make a commitment? You can’t father children with a memory, or grow old with a fading photograph. At least Hutch had the guts to try again. After Vanessa, Jeannie, Abby, Gillian…he’d had the guts to give it another shot with Sandra. What have I accomplished? Starsky flopped onto his side. Let’s see: there was Rosey Malone. That was smart. Fall in love with part of your job. That’s what she really was—just part of the job. And in the end she’d accepted even that and believed I loved her…and then left. Okay, Starsky, score one for yourself. You tried, and it flopped. If you hadn’t been so damned vulnerable emotionally after Terry that you couldn’t keep your head on straight during that assignment, letting the first woman who sparked a little serious interest twist you into a knot…
Okay, there was Emily. You shot her in the head and then made friends with her. Warped path to follow into a relationship, but it led to something for awhile. But not for long. Once her sight was back, her dependence was gone, and so was her love. A few scattered evenings out, and it was obvious that you reminded her of being blind and scared and dependent.
Kira. Damn it. Starsky turned again, settling on his side. The glow of the digital clock ominously informed him it was almost five in the morning. Should’ve slipped something in Hutch’s pizza to knock him out awhile, he thought, smiling to himself in the dark. Hutch will still be up rattling around in a couple of hours. Has some innate inability to sleep in. So now I can think about Kira and how she put my heart through a meat grinder. Shit. She had to do it with my partner… Bitch. He had tried to find another word for her, tried not to think of her quite that savagely, but that was what it boiled down to in the end.
God knows Hutch wasn’t exactly wide-eyed and innocent in all of it. I tell him I love her and he goes to her house and gets in bed with her. That brought another position change, returning him to his back. Well, we settled that. We finally dusted ourselves off, filled out our reports on that whole dance hall fiasco, came back here and fought for three solid hours until we were too hoarse to talk. I ended up crying, then Hutch ended up crying because I was, then we started laughing…and somewhere in that laughter, something healed and we moved on…or did we? Why in hell am I thinking about it now? Would it have been better to marry Kira, father her kids, and then have her dump me? That moment at Huggy’s was worth a lot. Just to show her that she wasn’t enough to split us up. That we chose our friendship over her in the end.
So here I am. By myself, planning to leech off Hutch’s family life. Except now that’s gone again, and it’ll take him a long time to risk that battered heart one more time. But he’ll probably do it. Guess I’ll be one of those old bachelor cops that lives for his job. Terry did say she’d wait on the other side. “I’ll be there…waiting.” Don’t give up on me, sweetheart. I know you’re waiting, and I’ll get there eventually. I have some more things I wanna do here, and I can’t leave that blond klutz by himself. Guess he depends on me as much as I do on him, and I sure know I wouldn’t wanna wake up in the morning if he wasn’t around anymore. Maybe we can go out a la Butch and Sundance, and you and Sandra can be waiting to reward us for our heroism…
Hutch’s voice startled him out of his near sleep state. His partner was moaning, saying something…the agitated mumblings of a nightmare. It wasn’t the first since he’d found Sandra’s body in that horrible state. Truthfully that was why Starsky so often tried to set something up after hours for them to do that would last late enough for him to stay with Hutch or for Hutch to crash at his place. He hated the thought of his partner waking up screaming, with that vivid image of Sandra, all alone.
“Hutch?” He managed to sit on the edge of the couch near his writhing partner. “Hutch, come on, babe, it’s me. Can ya wake up for me?” Starsky shook him gently. “It’s a bad dream, buddy.” Starsky waited while a little of the strain seemed to leave Hutch’s features, and he finally opened his eyes. “You were having a nightmare, buddy. Everything’s okay,” he said softly, pushing a couple strands of hair out of his partner’s eyes.
“Sandra…she’s dead,” he stated, just like he always did when he woke up from one of those dreams. That part’s real, buddy. Wish I could make it just a bad dream too.
“I know.” Starsky waited a minute, watching Hutch fiddle absent-mindedly with one of the stuffed rabbit’s ears. “Same nightmare, babe?”
“Not exactly.” He swallowed hard. “She wasn’t…coming down the aisle, like before, but she…she was in her coffin, but…like she was…in the bedroom—and that rose was on her chest…” Hutch squeezed his eyes shut and his chest heaved a time or two.
“Just let it out, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not okay. She’s dead, Starsk. Nothing’s okay,” he protested angrily through tears he was trying to control.
“I know.” Starsky heard the words as echoes of things he’d said himself after Terry died. Hutch had tried so hard to comfort him in those first few weeks, but he’d felt much the same way. Very little made him feel any better. “Lift up a little.” Starsky slid into position to sit on the end cushion of the couch. “You need a little sleep, Blintz. You’re lookin’ like a zombie. Put your head back right here.” Starsky straightened the pillows in his lap.
“You’re gonna get a stiff neck sleeping like that,” Hutch objected, settling into position nonetheless. He actually hadn’t slept the night through since the night of Sandra’s death, right here, on the couch, with Starsky close by.
“Let me worry about that. Now shut up and go to sleep. I’m here, pal.”
“I’m so tired, Starsk.”
“I know. Relax. Think about…think about the ocean—you know, like up at the cabin? The way the water would just kind of roll up on the beach? And the breeze, that fresh smell of the water…seagulls flying overhead…building sandcastles…counting stars while you lie there in the sand, feeling the breeze…” He looked down at Hutch, noticed the closed eyes and felt the evenness of his breathing. Mission accomplished.
CHAPTER 3
Just one more night
And I’m comin’ off this long and winding road.
I’m on my way…
Home sweet home…
The first psycho of the day was a grocery clerk named Clark Hodgeston, an habitual offender who had served time in juvenile hall for robbing and cutting an elderly woman, and then in prison for aggravated assault on his girlfriend with a kitchen knife. The tall young man with greasy brown hair and a furtive expression had an alibi for both murders—he was working, bagging groceries at the front of the store, and at least two check-outs were able to verify his whereabouts on the night of Sandra’s murder. The same night, there had been a shoplifting incident at the store near the same time, and Clark along with two of his co-workers chased the man, apprehended him and called the police. They made a note to verify the police report later. Nedloe and Elliot had never questioned him personally, so at least they weren’t replicating efforts. The results, however, were not stellar.
The second man on their list had been a vagrant prior to his arrest, and was now listed as living in a rundown tennement in the inner city. He was a portly man in his mid-fifties who had served twenty years in prison for killing his wife, claiming he needed her blood. He was indeed in his apartment, attired in a dirty plaid robe and at least a week’s beard growth. The stench of cheap liquor and cigars permeated the air of the stuffy little apartment, and neither detective had any strong desire to linger there.
George Miller could neither remember nor account for where he was the nights of the killings, but claimed he had been cured during his prison psychotherapy. In the next sentence, he bragged of learning to overcome his need for human blood and to subsist on the blood of rats and other small animals when necessary. Given his labored breathing and devotion to his booze bottle, neither considered him a likely option as the killer. He also claimed not to own a car, which would have made a trip to the other side of town very difficult for someone in his obviously inferior health. He was a possible, of course, but not a likely. Sandra would have never let him in the house.
Duane Lasher was a tall, attractive man with striking dark hair and dark eyes. He had gotten a little rough with a woman he met at a party a few years back, and had threatened her with a knife, claiming he had cut other women before who said “no” to him. There was never any proof to back up those statements, so he had served time for that assault and nothing more. He was currently employed as a financial consultant, and found the visit from the police to his office very uncomfortable. He provided easily verifiable information from his day planner for the detectives to check regarding his whereabouts the nights of the murders. Defeated and frustrated, Starsky and Hutch left the attractively appointed office suite and returned to the car.
“Dobey’s not gonna let us work on this case.” Hutch sounded defeated. “Even if we bust our humps and get all this information together, he’s still going to say we’re emotionally involved and leave it to Nedloe and Elliot.”
“They haven’t come up with anything so far.”
“I’m telling you—he won’t let us have it.” Hutch shook his head and stared out the open widow of the Torino.
“Hey, don’t get so down yet. First of all, we aren’t done investigatin’ on our own, and second, since when have we let a little thing like departmental procedure slow us down, huh?”
“Can’t argue with that logic,” Hutch replied, snickering a little.
The Pits was doing its usual lively lunch business when the two detectives arrived. Huggy was mingling as he usually did, and wended his way over to join his friends.
“Is this official business?” Huggy quipped. “I’ve seen happier faces in front of a firing squad.” Huggy pulled up a chair.
“We’re doing some off-the-record investigating into Sandra’s death, Hug,” Starsky explained.
“There’s another young woman who was killed the same way a month earlier.” Hutch let the implication of a serial killer dangle.
“Any hot leads?”
“Well, we were kinda hopin’ you might do a little poking around for us, Hug,” Starsky replied. “We’re looking for a nut who likes to cut ladies.”
“I’ll see what I can find out. But that ain’t exactly the kind of thing folks are real up front about, you know.”
“Anything’ll help at this point.” Starsky slumped back in the seat. “Hutch is right about one thing—we won’t get assigned to this case officially, because we’d be considered ’emotionally involved.’ So whatever you can come up with before we go back to work would be great.”
“Consider it done. You keep the faith, Hutch, my man. We’ll find this creep one way or another.” Huggy rose from his chair and headed back for the bar.
Starsky drained his Coke and motioned to the waitress to bring another.
“Wonder how long before Dobey figures out what we’re doing.” Hutch pushed his salad around on the plate.
“Will you stop moving that and eat something? I know you’re probably not hungry, but you haven’t been eating hardly anything since…since Sandra.” Starsky had been unnerved by Hutch’s appearance since Sandra’s death. He was pale and definitely showing a significant weight loss now. He ate, but only small amounts, and often sent most of the food back on his plate. The trip to the cabin had revived him somewhat, and he was investigating the case and moving on, but it was obvious his grief process was far from finished having its way with him.
“I don’t want it.” He pushed the plate forward and leaned back in the booth. “It’s just this…”
“Pain somewhere between your chest and your stomach that never goes away?” Starsky smiled knowingly as he finished the sentence. “And it moves up into your throat when you pick up the fork.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“I know, buddy. But you’re losin’ weight, and you shouldn’t lose more. The last thing Sandra would want is to see you make yourself sick.”
“You’re right. But I still don’t want it.” Hutch rubbed the length of his face with one smooth gesture of his right hand. Somehow, he looked more haggard when he’d finished. “Don’t start mothering me, Starsk. I’m not in the mood for it, okay?” His tone was friendlier than his words, and Starsky didn’t take exception to the admonition.
“Okay, I won’t mother you. But you can’t make me not care. I’m cooking tonight—something really hard to prepare. That way, if you don’t eat it, you’ll be hurting my feelings.”
“What is it?”
“Haven’t decided yet, but it’ll be complicated.” Starsky smiled at the waitress as she delivered his drink and took their plates. “Hey, Anita, bring us a hot fudge cake with lots of ice cream and two spoons, okay?”
“Starsky, damn it—”
“Ah-ah!” Starsky cut off the angry protest. “I’m not motherin’ you now. You either shut up and eat your half of that dessert or I’ll shove your face in it and hold it there until you have vanilla ice cream up both nostrils.”
“Don’t make me use my piece on you, partner.” Hutch’s voice was falsely threatening. “Ice cream up the nose, huh?” He contemplated the mental picture, and the mustache distinctly twitched in a prelude to a smile. “How d’you suppose the coroner would list that cause of death?”
“He’d come up with some term like ‘nasal frigidity,’” Starsky observed, laughing.
“I don’t think I want to know what that comment means,” Anita stated as she placed a monstrosity of chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream between the two men. To Starsky’s surprise, Hutch held his own pretty well in digging through the concoction. They had managed to get off on a tangent of pure silliness for awhile, with Hutch’s biggest concern being the gluey hot fudge that seemed perpetually attracted to his mustache.
As they pulled into traffic, Hutch mumbled something under his breath.
“What?” Starsky asked, keeping his eyes on the road.
“I told Sandra’s mother I’d stop by. She has a couple of things of Sandra’s she thinks I should have.”
“We could swing by there now. We were going to talk to that one caterer—remember, the one Sandra and Madeleine both talked to? It’s not too far from the Jerome place.”
“Okay. I guess there’s no time like the present.”
“You don’t sound too thrilled to go there.” Starsky stole a glance at Hutch, then returned his attention to the mid-day traffic.
“I guess…seeing them…it’s just still kind of, I don’t know, loaded, I guess. She looked so much like her mother, and…I don’t know. But I still said I’d go, so…”
“So I guess we should go, huh?”
“Yeah. Guess so,” Hutch responded, lacklustre.
* * * *
The Jerome house was a sprawling one-floor contemporary structure in an area of similar posh homes. Having made his living as an architect, Stephen Jerome’s house was as spectacular as expected. Dramatic intermingling of stone, wood and glass distinguished the home from its attractive, but more conventional, neighbors. The Torino rumbled to a stop near the front entrance on the circular drive. They approached the door, and soon after the bell was rung, Angela Jerome answered it.
“Ken! Oh, hello, David. This a surprise. Come in, both of you.” She stepped aside as they entered. She was petite like Sandra, with a few streaks of white blending with the blonde hair that was carefully styled in neat curls. Starsky hadn’t been in the house before, and he indulged in gawking at the beamed ceilings, dramatic full length windows which opened onto the wooded lot, and the huge fieldstone fireplace in the living room. He was still trying to determine if his presence was a good surprise or a point of irritation for Angela, but he chose the former interpretation and put on his best guest’s smile.
“This is a beautiful house,” he finally said, as she led them to have seats on the couch near the fireplace. She occupied an overstuffed chair nearby.
“Thank you. Stephen designed it all himself. Ken, I’ve been going through her things, from the apartment, and I have a few things set aside I thought you might like.”
“That was very thoughtful of you, Angela.” Hutch eyed the small carton with the flaps not taped down, that was neatly marked “Ken”.
“I finally got up the courage to really look through them all…most of them weren’t items that would have interested you—they were old yearbooks, her clothes… Anyway, I put these things aside.” She seemed at a loss for what to say next. “Ken, has anything happened with the case? I speak with Mrs. Nolan on the phone all the time, and I know how very frustrated they are…it’s been a long time since Madeleine’s death…and now, time is passing after Sandra, and before this lunatic kills again—”
“We’re doing everything we can,” Starsky spoke up. “This isn’t really our case, officially. We’re working it with Detectives Nedloe and Elliot—you’ve probably talked to them already.”
“They came by, asked a whole list of standard questions…” Angela sighed. “It all seems so hopeless.”
“I know. Most investigations do at the outset,” Hutch responded, not telling her he felt just as hopeless and blue about it as she did.
“Did Sandra have any enemies—angry old boyfriends, anything at all?” Starsky asked. He felt Hutch’s icy glare. Turning to meet his partner’s eyes, he hastened to explain, “I just thought there might have been someone that she didn’t think it was important to mention—something that was over and done with in the past. Is there anything you didn’t happen to tell Nedloe and Elliot?” Starsky hoped maybe Sandra’s fiancé and his partner might have better luck uncovering any personal information that could generate a lead.
“Not that I know of. Sandra had a few other boyfriends, but she was a nice girl. She didn’t run around a lot, and we knew all the young men she was dating.”
“Did she ever mention anyone harassing her? Someone she didn’t like or wasn’t comfortable with who kept calling or trying to keep in touch?” Starsky persisted.
“Nothing like that.”
“We’ll be in touch.” Hutch stood up, unable to listen to the familiar inflections in Angela’s voice, to analyze that he was seeing what Sandra would have looked like if they’d been allowed to begin growing older together. “We’re going to follow up a few more leads, and if anything develops at all, I promise we’ll be in touch. Thanks again for getting this stuff together.” He picked up the small carton and walked toward the door, with Starsky and Angela close behind him.
“How are you doing, dear? You look…tired.”
“It’s not easy. Sandra was…I loved her more than I…more than I thought I could. And losing Elizabeth…” As Hutch was shaking his head slowly, he noted her blank expression. “The baby,” he clarified. He hated how everyone called her “the baby,” and had been lulled into the immense respect for her memory his partner always showed in discussing her by what would have been her given name instead.
“It meant the world to me that she would be named after my mother.”
“Of course, if it was a boy, she was going to let me choose. David Michael—after this guy over here.” Hutch smiled genuinely for the first time during their visit, and Starsky felt himself blushing a little at the attention.
“Sandra said you two were more like brothers than partners,” she said with a slight smile, though Starsky could imagine she thought “Stephen” would have been a more appropriate choice for their grandson.
“We better get going. How are you two holding up?” Hutch asked as they were moving toward the front door.
“We have our good days and our bad days. Knowing you two are going to follow this up personally helps.” She paused, and shook her head slowly. “Good heavens, this is a nightmare.”
“I wish it were. That would mean we could wake up.” Hutch didn’t seem able to say more as he moved quickly through the door and headed for the car.
“I didn’t mean to upset him—”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Jerome. He just really loved your daughter and granddaughter a lot. We’ll be in touch.” Starsky took his leave and went to join his partner in the Torino. Hutch was looking out the passenger window, keeping his face decidedly out of Starsky’s view. “Hey, babe, it’s okay.” He rested his hand on Hutch’s shoulder. “Talking about her has to be painful—”
“I don’t want…to talk about it right now, Starsk.” There was a shaky intake of breath. “The baby. Goddammit, she had a name! My daughter—their granddaughter.”
“Hutch, I’m sure she feels bad about—”
“Don’t try to make me feel better, okay? Just drop it.”
“Okay.” Starsky was quiet a minute. “Wanna go level with Dobey? Maybe we can get officially assigned with Nedloe and Elliot.” He left his hand on Hutch’s shoulder, despite his warning not to attempt any kind of comfort.
“I want that son of a bitch, whoever or whatever the hell he is. I want to kill him.” The voice was low and controlled, but slightly shaky.
“I know, buddy. We’ll get him. But we’ll hand him over to the courts—”
“So they can put him in a funny farm and then turn him loose again.”
“Hutch, we can’t just—”
“I wouldn’t think I’d have to tell you, of all people, about psychos getting out of looney bins.”
“No, you don’t,” Starsky replied quietly, removing his hand from Hutch’s shoulder.”
“I was so damned worried you were going to shoot Prudholm that day at the old zoo…but you didn’t. You did what was right and look where it got you…where it got Terry.” Hutch was still fuming, letting the statement hang in the air like a vapor. Starsky was silent. He started the car and pulled out of the driveway onto the road without a word. As his anger cooled, Hutch realized what he had said, and how it had sounded. “Dear God, Starsk, I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t. Just let it lie.” Starsky’s voice was low and even.
“I didn’t mean that—”
“Damn it!” Starsky pulled over to the curb sharply and slammed on the brakes. “I said drop it, Hutchinson, and that’s what I meant. I don’t want to bring Terry and Prudholm into this. I…can’t.” He got out of the car and stalked off down the sidewalk.
“Starsky!” Hutch took the keys out of the ignition and followed his partner, catching up to him relatively easily in a couple of long-legged trots. “Come on, buddy, you know I didn’t mean you did anything wrong. You tried to do what was right and—”
“It got Terry killed. I heard you the first time.”
“Starsky, please, I—”
“Look, I have to live in that private hell every day of my life.” He stopped dead in his tracks and faced Hutch. “You aren’t tellin’ me anything that isn’t part of every night I go to bed and every morning I get up. Terry’s death is firmly on my conscience, and it ain’t never gonna leave it. If I had shot that bastard when I had the chance, she’d be alive. Hell, we’d probably be married with kids by now.”
“Not if you were doing time for shooting an unarmed man.”
“Oh, right. You’re going to stand there and tell me you’d have testified against me to get me sent up.” He watched Hutch, who lowered his eyes and shook his head slowly.
“No. I know I couldn’t have done that.” Hutch looked up. “Your role in Terry’s death was an innocent one, babe. If you had shot Prudholm in cold blood that day, there wouldn’t’ve been a damned thing innocent about it. It would have been murder.”
He watched for a long tense moment while Starsky searched his eyes in that penetrating manner he had, as if he were determining whether or not he should trust what he was being told. Hutch filled in the silent void. “I just meant that you did everything right, and put your faith in the system, and the system let you and Terry…and even Prudholm…down. He was a lunatic, needed psychiatric treatment, wasn’t rational—and they let him out to do more damage. That wasn’t fair to anyone. It was a damned stinking tragedy.” Hutch looked away and started strolling forward himself, and Starsky fell into step next to him. “I don’t know if I can do what’s right here. I don’t know if I can get past this without…ripping him apart.”
“You arrested Gunther and brought him in without a mark on him. You told me you never wanted to kill anyone more in your life. I know this is different, and Sandra meant more to you, but—”
“Hold it. Meant more to me than what?” Hutch stopped now, and Starsky looked at him, slightly puzzled. Starsky hadn’t made the statement hastily or angrily. His tone had been calm and matter-of-fact.
“She was gonna be your wife, have your kid. It makes sense that it would mean more to you if someone killed her than if someone killed me.”
“You listen to me.” Hutch grabbed him by the shoulders. “Nobody means more to me than you do. You got that?” It was a draw who looked more surprised at Hutch’s outburst. “I just mean that…well, you’re right. If I could bring that son of a bitch in and not slit his fucking throat with one of his fancy letter openers, I can handle this one too.” Hutch smiled a little uneasily and let go of Starsky.
“That’s the spirit,” Starsky responded, smiling back at his partner.
“I’m sorry. I’m acting like an ass.”
“Yeah, but that’s okay. I’m used to it.” Starsky flopped an arm over Hutch’s shoulders and pulled him along as he walked in the direction of the car.
“Oh is that so?” Hutch asked, indignant.
“It’s for sale!!” Starsky stopped dead in his tracks in front of a large, paint-thirsty Victorian-era house.
“So?” Hutch’s heart froze at the implication of his partner’s excitement. He recalled the ill-fated money pit that had been Starsky’s first—last—and only property purchase.
“Look at it! I love this house, Hutch! I’ve always kinda thought it was neat, but I never thought it’d be for sale. Come on.” He hurried up the six cement steps that led from the main sidewalk to the sidewalk stretching to the front porch of the house.
“Starsky, be careful. You’ll probably fall through that old porch.”
“Oh for pete’s sake. It just needs some paint and—” As he said that, his foot went through the second step, throwing him off balance and dumping him very unceremoniously on his rear end at Hutch’s feet.
“I told you to watch your step.”
“Damn. Think I sprained my ankle.”
“Can you move it?” Hutch crouched next to Starsky, no longer happy to have been right.
“Not right now. Just a second.” Starsky took a deep breath and managed to move it slightly. “Shit. This is just what we need.”
“First we have to get you off the ground.” Hutch leaned forward and Starsky put his arm around his partner’s neck while Hutch pulled upward. “Think you can make it to the car like this?”
“Yeah, but I want to write down the phone number—”
“Starsky, the porch damn near killed you. Do you want to risk what’s on the inside?”
“So the porch is rotted. Doesn’t mean the foundation is. Come on, buddy, you got a pen?”
“You’re hopeless.” Hutch dug around in his pockets until he produced a pen. He held the pad in his right hand while Starsky wrote the number with his left, giving them the odd appearance of a pair of mismatched Siamese twins to a passing couple who seemed intrigued by the whole scenario.
“There. Now I can call from home tonight while you’re waiting on me.”
“While I’m doing what?” Hutch teased, knowing perfectly well he would be doing exactly that, along with applying ice packs and generally spoiling Starsky rotten while he flaked out on his couch with his foot propped on a pillow. He began to wonder if Starsky’s propensity for twisting that particular ankle had less to do with its weakness and more to do with a plot to extract servitude from him.
* * * *
Starsky did have a mild sprain, with some swelling and bruising, which made Hutch further question his sanity for wanting to inquire about the rat trap where the injury had occurred.
“The realtor said they’re real motivated,” Starsky announced as Hutch finally sunk into a chair himself. After treating the offending ankle with ice packs and treating Starsky with a large pizza and now a dish of rocky road ice cream, he had earned the right to relax awhile.
“Starsk, this price tag is still a little on the high end, isn’t it? I mean, even if you made them an offer, could you afford this place—and you know it needs work.”
“I’m sick of pounding my money down a rat hole on rent. I thought this would be an investment.” He was quiet a minute. “You know the price wouldn’t be out of reach if…” He looked up at Hutch hopefully.
“Oh, no!” Hutch waved a warning hand in front of him. “Not again.”
“You got your money back.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t and I felt guilty and split mine with you. I’m not going in for that again. Besides, we’re not handymen. We’d hardly clear a profit by the time we did all the work that mess needs done on it.”
“I wasn’t thinkin’ of sellin’ it again…”
“Hold it. You want us to live there?”
“It’s a big house, Hutch. The realtor said there are two staircases and it wouldn’t take much to make it a two-unit—you wouldn’t even know I was there.”
“Do you have even a vague idea how big the monthly payments would be?”
“Depends on what we put down. Take a look at this.” Starsky handed him a small pad of paper, the first sheet of which contained a myriad of figures. “That’s only $250 more per month than our combined rents.”
“Only?“
“We could afford it.”
“Not and make all the repairs and do all the updating.”
“But I was allowing some cash out for that in the downpayment figures.”
“Starsky, we’d be cleaning ourselves out. Besides, what happens when you get married?”
“I don’t know. Haven’t done that so far. If it’s a two-unit, we could still live there. One side would be big enough for two people and even a kid. It’d be a long time before one of us would have to move.”
“You’ve got this all mapped out, huh?”
“Can we please just go through the house? If you really hate it, I’ll drop it. I promise.”
“You can’t go traipsing through houses with your ankle like that,” Hutch objected, hoping he had saved himself from his partner’s real estate plans by virtue of the injury.
“The doctor just told me to take it easy for a few days. For us that just means not running down alleys or jumping fences for a day or two. I can hobble through a house.” Starsky was beginning to look worn down by his partner’s reaction, but he made one last stab. “Please?” He had found it unusually effective in the past, especially when coupled with the right basset hound eyes.
“All right, we’ll go look at it. But I’m not making any promises, Starsky.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Starsky smiled contentedly and reached for the phone to make an appointment.
* * * *
The next day saw them down at the precinct, two days shy of the end of their vacation, negotiating with Dobey to let them have the case. Predictably, he shook his head immediately. They even tried pleading for working with Nedloe and Elliot officially. The response was unchanged.
“You’re too emotionally involved in this, Hutchinson,” Dobey repeated, becoming irritated at their refusal to take no for an answer.
“Yes, of course I’m emotionally involved. But as Starsky so aptly pointed out to me yesterday, I was pretty emotionally involved with the Gunther case and you didn’t pull me off that one. I handled it. I didn’t kill the old bastard with my bare hands…appealing as that thought was. I still acted like a cop. That’s what I am. And I’ll do the same thing on this case.”
“Besides, I’ll keep him on a short leash, Cap,” Starsky spoke up, the ghost of a smile haunting his face. Hutch shot him an admonishing look that silenced any further comments. For a tense few moments, Dobey considered the option of enforcing his decision and pulling his rank, but he could count the times he’d done that to these two on one hand. He finally exhaled loudly, like he usually did, and let them have their way. They would be allowed to work with Nedloe and Elliot.
The morning was spent talking to Sandra’s friends who were to be members of her bridal party, several of her co-workers and a few more of the service people she had contacted prior to her death. They were re-doing much of the other team’s legwork, but fortunately, both Nedloe and Elliot were mature enough to recognize the value of four heads working an investigation over just two. Further, they acknowledged the possibility that Sandra’s friends might confide something to the woman’s fiancé they wouldn’t tell the police.
Depressed by dwelling on the murder most of the morning, Hutch was in a completely irritable frame of mind by the time they arrived at the house to meet the realtor. Of course, the fact she was a pretty brunette with a bubbly personality only enhanced Starsky’s enthusiasm for the project. Hutch’s grief was still keeping his enthusiasm for the opposite sex on hold, so even this little diversion did nothing to lighten his spirits.
“I’m Cecile Valentine, New Vista Real Estate.” She extended a hand first toward Starsky, who shook it, flashing one of his best smiles.
“Dave Starsky. This is my partner, Ken Hutchinson.” As the two shook hands, Starsky detected a puzzled look in her eyes. “We’re detectives,” he added.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” she responded to Hutch’s polite smile and nod. “I’m so sorry about your ankle, Mr. Starsky,” she began, as she led the way to the side entrance of the house. “As you can see, we’ve roped off the front porch entrance and put up a warning sign. I had no idea the steps were that unsteady. I’ve been up and down them a few times since I listed this last month.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he replied, still smiling. “Call me Dave, Cecile.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be seeing the house at a bit of a disadvantage. The front entry is very impressive. We’re going in through the kitchen.” Once she had made contact with the house, key in lock, her bubbly demeanor seemed to dissipate. She was all realtor, concerning herself with the task at hand. “The house was built in 1889. It’s one of the older homes on the block, but this is an extremely stable area in terms of property values.” She opened the door and flipped on a dim light. They were on a large landing, which would allow them to go down a dark staircase into the basement or up three steps into the kitchen. “Again, please bear in mind that you have a much more impressive entry in front.” She led the way up the three green-carpeted but nearly threadbare steps.
“Obviously needs some decorating,” Hutch observed, barely missing catching his foot in a large, shredded tear in the carpeting.
“The owner was an elderly man. He just passed away about a year ago. The estate was recently settled, and so the house is on the market. His health was not good in the last several years, so he was not able to make all the improvements the house needed.” She put up a yellowed window shade over the kitchen sink. In the flood of daylight, one of two observations could be made. Between Starsky and Hutch, both were.
“Nice view of the yard out back,” Starsky commented, looking out the window. Of course, the overgrown, weed-infested garden which was the centerpiece of an equally neglected lawn left something to be desired as a view.
“Needs a whole new lawn,” Hutch grumbled, looking over his partner’s shoulder. Starsky turned to him with a withering lip curl.
“The price reflects the fact the house needs work. But the elegance is all here. With a little restoration—” Cecile flipped on another light in a hall that led to the main entry, “this place could be one of the finest homes in the Bay City area.”
Even Hutch couldn’t argue that point. If you wanted to embrace this money pit with both arms and your bank account, it could be spectacular. The woodwork was dusty but mostly intact and the open staircase leading to the second floor was nothing short of stunning, rising halfway, then turning to complete the path to the second level. He was trying to picture how one might convert the place into a two-unit without destroying its character.
“We’d want to have it inspected,” Hutch spoke up finally. Starsky was startled by the statement, since they hadn’t even seen the majority of the house.
“That’s no problem. Being the house is vacant, you would be free to have any type of inspection done you saw fit, provided it didn’t damage the property. The living room is really lovely. You’ll have to picture it with some cleaning and decorating done, but it is truly beautiful.” She pushed open a pair of heavy oak French doors off the entry hall to reveal the spacious room, which boasted an ornately carved fireplace with marble mantel, two large windows facing the front of the house, and the airy feeling of 9′ ceilings.
“Wow,” Starsky was taking in all the charm and history of the atmosphere. Hutch was still doing his mental renovation calculations.
“Is it safe to assume that the carpeting and window treatments are pretty much a loss throughout the house?” he asked.
“Essentially, yes. As I said, this house has been let go to some extent because the owner was an elderly gentleman who couldn’t do the repairs, and quite frankly, I don’t believe was in a financial situation to undertake major renovations. He died in a rest home last year. The house has been vacant almost three years.” She was easily able to tell that Starsky was in love with the place, and that Hutch was cautiously admiring of its historic charm but also fatally aware of its flaws. “Mr. Hutchinson, this house is structurally sound—”
“Except for the front porch,” Hutch interjected.
“I’m talking about the foundation, the walls, the roof. Mr. Oliver, the previous owner, had a new roof put on about eight years ago. The plumbing, heating and wiring systems are old—I’m not going to lie to you about that—but they are all in working order. I have copies of inspectors’ reports back at the office, and of course, you are more than welcome to have any of your own inspections done.”
“If this house is such a deal, why is it still sitting here?” Hutch probed. Starsky was watching them like a tennis spectator, as the conversational ball moved from one to the other.
“The family is anxious to settle the estate. It quite frankly has almost no curb appeal despite the fact it’s structurally sound, there is a lot of work to be done, and many people are afraid of old utilities. I own a home in a similar vintage—mine was built in 1896—and I’m still using the original equipment except for the wiring, which I would quite frankly recommend re-doing in this place. I had a short that almost caused a fire in my place a few years back, and then I updated it.”
“Well, let’s see the rest of it. How’s the ankle, pal?” Hutch turned to Starsky, who had taken up residence on the edge of a dusty couch while the discussion took place.
“I’d like to see the rest of the house and then get off it. I think it’s swelling like crazy.”
“Okay. Let’s go to it then.” Hutch followed Cecile, and Starsky followed him. The rest of the first floor, in addition to the living room and kitchen, boasted a formal dining room, study, bathroom and bedroom. The bathrooms, thankfully, had been updated in the 50’s. They weren’t necessarily the latest in fashion, but the fixtures were sufficient.
The second floor offered four bedrooms, another bathroom and a library. There was an attic above that, which Starsky reluctantly passed on visiting to favor his ankle while Hutch and Cecile made the upward trek. He was satisfied he at least didn’t have to be continuously defensive of his dream house. Hutch was nit-picking, but he wasn’t knifing the idea.
“You’ve been in policework a long time?” Cecile asked conversationally as they mounted the steps.
“Seems like forever, sometimes.”
“You and your partner have been detectives for most of that?”
“Most of it. We met in the academy,” Hutch said, smiling slightly.
“This house was his idea, right?” She pulled the cord on the overhead light.
“He spotted it. We’ve considered investing in something off and on. We’re just looking for the right one.”
“Well, what you see is what you get,” she announced, smiling a little. “The family is selling the place as is. Everything that’s still in the house, stays. I suppose if you want it hauled away, however, we could negotiate something to that effect.”
“Looks like lots of personal stuff here.” Hutch crouched by a string-bound stack of letters which sat on the top of a hope chest. “They’re just leaving this stuff here?”
“I was tempted to burn those when I listed the house. It doesn’t seem right.” She seemed to have forgotten herself and her professional demeanor for just a moment as she spoke ill of her client, the seller. She recovered quickly. “I think this attic could be finished into a lovely living space. Your partner said you might want to convert this to a two-unit?”
“Well, we’ve never really considered being ‘roomies’ before, and we both like our privacy.”
“Oh, but it would still be just the two of you here?”
“One in each side,” he retorted, smiling slightly, though puzzled why she was so interested in their living arrangements. He walked toward the dormer window, noting the slope of the ceiling above, which consisted mostly of aged rafters. There was a panoramic view of the neighborhood, and Cecile was right about what a pleasant and unique living space this could be. Starsky had happily stated on the way over to the house that if they converted it, he’d let Hutch have his choice of units. This complicated things. Initially, the lower unit with the large back porch that just cried out to be converted into a greenhouse would have won. This attic room, though…there was something peaceful about it that made it seem like the perfect retreat from everything.
“Since the lower unit would have most of the big rooms, this might offer a chance at some spaciousness for whichever of you chooses the upper unit.”
“I was just thinking about that.” Hutch wandered back toward the center of the room where Cecile stood. “My partner and I have to do some figuring. I can tell you right now we wouldn’t be paying the full asking price.”
“I’m sure the owner would consider any offers, but you must understand that this is a very grand old home, and even though it needs a considerable amount of work, the potential is worth a great deal. It truly is a fine investment. Your partner has a good eye.”
“He must be improving, then.” Hutch laughed to himself at the thought of their last real estate venture.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, nothing. Just an old running joke between us,” he explained lightly.
“Hey! You two still alive up there?” Starsky was calling from the foot of the stairs, obviously tired of being left out of the action for so long.
“We’re on our way down,” Hutch replied, waiting as Cecile began her descent of the stairs ahead of him.
“What was it like?” Starsky asked immediately as Hutch emerged from the door that led the the steps.
“Like Cecile said, it has real potential for finishing. There sure is a lot of personal junk in this place. They’re leaving everything. I guess in terms of furniture, that’s a good thing.”
“All this stuff stays?” Starsky looked positively elated, and Hutch elbowed him in the ribs when Cecile wasn’t looking. No point in letting them know that leaving their garbage was a selling point, Hutch thought to himself.
“I told Cecile we’d have to do some figuring,” Hutch explained as they headed downstairs, Starsky bringing up the rear as he hobbled along on his bad ankle.
“We haven’t seen the basement yet, gentlemen. It’s right this way.” She led the way through the kitchen, and Starsky signed off again to wait at the table. He landed in a chair quickly and winced as he flexed his ankle.
“Gettin’ pretty bad, huh?” Hutch squatted by his partner’s feet and lifted the edge of the pantleg slightly. It was obvious that if they were to remove the shoe at that moment, it would never go back on again.
“I think I overdid it a little.” He tried to smile at Cecile, but Hutch’s probing of the injury didn’t improve his outlook. “Don’t start moving it around! The doctor already did that and it hurt like hell.”
“I don’t suppose you put the elastic bandage on it this morning.” Hutch straightened up, having been admonished from further examining the ankle.
“Makes it feel worse,” Starsky retorted defensively.
“I’ll go take a quick look at the basement and then we’ll get you home.” Hutch didn’t wait for a reply, but instead followed Cecile down the narrow steps to the basement.
It was an unremarkable old basement, but from all preliminary checking, the foundation appeared sound and the basement dry. There was another myriad of junk accumulated there, but a couple truckloads to the local Salvation Army would probably take care of that. At a loss for anything sparkling to say except to point out the dryness, Cecile was rather quiet and their investigation of the basement, short.
Standing near their parked cars, the trio faced the house as they talked, agreeing that the two men would go home and do some figuring and get back to her by the next day.
“You want to get some take-outs?” Hutch asked as he drove the Torino toward Starsky’s apartment. The other had gladly relinquished the exertion of foot pedals on his swelling joint.
“Mexican.”
“Italian,” Hutch countered.
“Nah—that means you’ll order some rabbit food over noodles for me. I want some real Italian—spaghetti with meatballs or lasagna—”
“How about burgers?” Hutch pulled into the parking lot of a McDonald’s Restaurant. “What do you want?”
“That house.”
“Starsk, come on. We haven’t even put a pen to paper yet to see how the numbers work out. Now what do you want to eat?”
“I want that house, Hutch. More’n I’ve ever wanted anything before. Come on, you know we could swing it.”
“I know no such thing until I do some figuring. Now what do you want?”
“Nothing.” Starsky crossed his arms over his chest, and his face bore a distinct frown. His partner was not impressed.
“Don’t pout, Starsky. You’re acting like a five-year-old about this. It’s not like buying a new skateboard. For God’s sake, it’s thousands and thousands of dollars—a major investment. Now either tell me what you want or you can go hungry!”
“Didn’t you like it? You haven’t said anything since we left. I mean that big staircase and all that woodwork and that big yard out back and—”
“It isn’t that simple. There’s a lot to consider. We have to do some figuring when we get home. Now for the last time, what do you want?”
“A Big Mac and fries and a strawberry shake. And one of those little pies, and a Coke. Oh—and—”
“Starsk, I’ve only got two hands. You’ve only got one stomach. Be reasonable.” Hutch got out of the car and headed up toward the restaurant, leaving his partner with yet something else to pout over until he returned.
* * * *
Upon arriving home, Hutch carefully assisted with the uncomfortable task of freeing Starsky’s foot from its shoe. After wrapping it up in ice packs and propping it on a pillow, Hutch again served his partner dinner in the living room. They ate in relative silence until Hutch finished his meal and went to the desk to find a couple of note pads, pencils and a calculator. What ensued was a chaos of numbers, figures, and flying notepad pages.
Hutch called a friend who was in the construction business, and finally convinced him to at least give them a ball park idea of what a new front porch and the conversion to a two-unit would involve on a house that size. The man wouldn’t commit to anything without seeing it, but the range of figures he quoted left Hutch reeling a little. The conversion to a duplex would have been easy if the upstairs hall had not been partially open, overlooking the entry hall. Closing that up without destroying the staircase altogether was going to be tricky at best, prohibitively expensive at worst. The utility bill figures the realtor provided added to their angst, since that tacked yet more onto the top of the monthly expenses. They could put more down than Starsky originally figured, but the renovations would cost more than they planned, so those funds, and then some, would be needed.
“Starsk, I just don’t see it.” Hutch tossed the pencil and paper on the coffee table and leaned back in his chair. “Between the regular monthly bills we have to pay and the cost of putting that place in shape…”
“We can scratch the satellite dish idea, and if I take the upstairs, we don’t have to close it off. You could still lock your French doors and the door to the kitchen and you’d be private. I’m not worried whether or not you can see into my hallway, for cryin’ out loud.”
“I suppose we don’t need to make quite so many permanent structural changes, huh?” Hutch looked back at the figures. Suddenly, spending thousands of dollars to make sure Starsky had to knock before entering his living space seemed absurd. A little mutual respect and common courtesy would take care of that.
“I can clean out the garden and the shrubs and stuff myself and plant new things. We can scratch the landscaping, Hutch. I know we need a professional to put in the new lawn, but we could do some of the other yard work. And if we made do with their furniture—”
“I still think we need to get the wiring taken care of, and I’m not convinced we should scrap our idea of putting in a new furnace. Besides, we won’t have any air conditioning in that place all summer if we rely on the old one. Normally, that’s okay. If we get another heat wave like last year—over 100 for about three weeks?”
“If we do the wiring and the furnace but skip the two-unit thing and the landscaper, how’re we doin’?” Starsky straightened from his slumped position on the couch as Hutch picked up his pad and pencil again and began figuring.
“If we don’t try to do all the redecorating up front, and we do most of that work ourselves…” Hutch did more diligent figuring. He looked up at Starsky. “Now don’t get all riled up, but if they’ll accept our lowest offer, I think we could swing it.”
“They’re gonna take it. I just know it, Hutch. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s meant to be.”
“I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. They might counter, and if they do, we can’t meet their price.”
“I’m gonna call Cecile.” Starsky reached for the phone.
“I think morning is time enough.”
“It’s only nine. Don’t ya think she’d be willing to write it up tonight? I mean, if somebody else got that house…”
“Okay,” Hutch responded with a chuckle. No one else had wanted it in the last few months, but lest he live out the rest of his days with Starsky blaming him for the loss of his dream house, Hutch relented.
Cecile was only too happy to stop in and draw up the purchase agreement and accept their deposit. She felt confident she could reach the spokesman for the family that night to notify him there was a purchase agreement, and she promised to get them an answer as soon as possible.
* * * *
“Sometimes I amaze myself,” Starsky commented, sliding behind the wheel of the Torino, juggling an order of Mexican take-outs. The tall, darkly beautiful girl behind the counter had definitely liked what she had seen when Starsky walked in, and he had used his usual charm on her, which, given her age, was sufficient to cultivate her blossoming interest in him.
“Yeah, me too.” Hutch rolled his eyes, lending a negative connotation to his agreement. “She’s all of what, 18?”
“You’re just jealous,” Starsky retorted, gunning the engine. “Cecile was sure checkin’ you out yesterday.””Oh, don’t be ridiculous. She was trying to sell us that rattletrap—”
“Hutch, don’t start. That’s our house.”
“Not yet it isn’t.” Hutch felt a certain relief in that situation.
“It will be.”
Starsky pulled up in front of police headquarters, claiming a prime parking spot just ahead of another pair of arriving detectives who honked at him. Jim Nedloe hung out the window and the two exchanged crude hand gestures back and forth, the other pair laughing as they rounded the corner for a less appealing spot. Jim and Starsky had an ongoing joke about the parking arrangements ever since Starsky, driving a loaner from Merl while the Torino was in the shop, had pulled a few slippery traffic maneuvers to get a front spot away from Nedloe and Elliot. In a hurry to make a meeting with Dobey, he hadn’t noticed he was undercutting fellow detectives for the spot. The two men had exchanged honked horns, and a couple of oaths out open windows before they got a good look at each other. Neither ever let the other live it down. Hutch and Elliot remained amused spectators.
“One of these days, Jim’s going to front-end you trying to get this spot.”
“Not the second time,” Starsky replied, still smiling.
The two were still joking around about Cecile, Hutch thoroughly unconvinced that there was any truth to the notion she had been checking him out in anything but a professional capacity, when they arrived in the squad room. Hutch plunked down at his desk and the smile on his face slowly faded as he spotted a new addition to his desktop. A small ceramic bride and groom looked back at him from the spot where they stood next to his pencil cup. Starsky was pouring coffee, but when he turned, he noticed Hutch’s fixation on the object.
“Hutch? What is it?” He didn’t see what it was his partner was fixated on, only that the other was frozen in space by the sight of it.
“Where the hell did that come from?” he asked, as if Starsky should know. “What?” Starsky hurried around the desk and spied the little statue he couldn’t see from the other side. “What the—?” He scanned the room. Hutch slid his chair back suddenly and strode quickly through the room and out the doors. “Okay, who’s the wise-ass?” Starsky demanded angrily. The others stared up at him, seeming startled. “Come on, whose sick idea of a joke was this?!” he demanded, his voice rising with his anger. “Answer me, damn it!!”
“What’s going on out here?” Dobey burst out of his office, ruffled by the commotion.
“Take a look on Hutch’s desk, Cap’n. I guess there’s somebody around this place with a damned perverted sense of humor.”
“My God,” Dobey said quietly. “Does anyone know anything about this?” Dobey asked in a more well-modulated tone. All heads shook slowly, and a few negative murmurs accompanied the motions. “Has anyone been in here today—delivery people, visitors—”
“Sure, Cap’n. Just like any other day,” one detective observed. “The pizza guy was here an hour or so ago, there have been two bookings and somebody came up from the mailroom. And that’s just while I’ve been watching.”
“Starsky, put that damn thing in an evidence bag.”
“Right.” Starsky grabbed one of the bags from the drawer of the desk and using a kleenex plucked from a nearby box, lifted it carefully and dropped in into the bag. The phone rang. “Starsky,” he barked into it.
“Sorry to disturb you at work, Mr. Starsky. This is Cecile Valentine. We have an answer on your purchase agreement. The owners have accepted your offer.”
“That’s great news,” Starsky replied lifelessly. All the more reason to hate the person who pulled this stunt. Not only had it hurt Hutch deeply, but it had ruined a moment in which Starsky felt he should have been dancing in the streets.
“You are still planning to follow through with the deal?” she asked. Did I sound that disinterested? Starsky asked himself.
“Most definitely. It really is good news, Cecile. And please call me Dave, huh?”
“Okay, Dave. You and Mr. Hutchinson will need to meet with me to sign some papers and discuss financing as soon as possible.”
“He’s not here right now. I’ll talk it over with him and call you back, okay?”
“Fine. I’ll be in a meeting for about an hour, but then I’ll be in the rest of the afternoon.”
“Great. Thanks again, Cecile. I really am happy about this.”
After hanging up the phone, he set out to find Hutch. He knew it couldn’t be too difficult, as the blond half of the duo had no car and there were a limited number of hiding places in the precinct. The men’s room on the third floor, a less frequently-traveled site than the one near the squadroom, was locked.
“Hutch, you in there?” Starsky tapped on the door. No response. That meant he was in there. Anyone else would have yelled something back at the inquiry. “Come on, buddy, open up, huh?” The lock finally clicked, and Starsky pushed open the door. Hutch had returned to the mirror, his back to Starsky.
“Sorry to take off like that,” he said, his voice a little on the husky side.
“It’s okay, pal.” Starsky locked the door behind himself now. “Dobey had me bag it like evidence. Everybody claimed they didn’t do it. Guess we’ll find out.” Starsky leaned back against the sink next to the one his partner was holding onto as he stared into the mirror. Starsky evaluated Hutch’s tired face with great compassion. He couldn’t resist sliding an arm around the hunched shoulders and resting his head against Hutch’s for a moment.
There was a knock at the door. Starsky ignored it and continued, speaking to his partner in reassuring tones.
“Hutch, come on, pal. Look at me, huh?” He waited while Hutch looked up as directed. “Cecile called.” Another knock. “Oh, keep your pants on!!” Starsky yelled at the closed door.
“About the house?” Hutch sniffled a little and straightened up.
“Congratulations, partner. We just bought ourselves a house.”
“They accepted the offer?”
“Yup. We got it!!” He watched Hutch’s face transform into a slightly more cheerful expression, and even if his partner wasn’t overcome with joy, Starsky figured he could use a hug for reasons of his own, so he hugged him excitedly anyway. Hutch squeezed back firmly before he was released. “She wants us to come in and sign papers today and talk about financing.”
“Hey, come on, open up!” The angry voice from the other side of the door suddenly became familiar. Simonetti, of all people. Here we are, closeted in the bathroom together with the door locked. That looks good, Starsky thought. And of course, he’ll try to make something out of it no matter what we say… What the hell, let’s give him a show…
“Mess up your hair,” he said to Hutch, who immediately caught on, and with an evil smile, followed the directive. Starsky disarrayed himself slightly, leaving one shirttail hanging loose and sauntered over to the door, casually flipping the lock. “‘morning, Simonetti,” Hutch greeted cheerfully, passing through the door as Starsky opened it for him. He smoothed the wild strands of blond hair into place and left the scene with a definite smirk.
“Hey, if it ain’t Laverne—or is it Shirley?” Starsky quipped as he passed the other man. Simonetti was left with his jaw slightly agape.
Hutch was holding the elevator for Starsky, and as soon as the doors closed, both burst out in such a fit of laughter that they were barely contained enough to return to the squad room.
“Did you see the look on his face?” Hutch asked, mopping tears of laughter from his eyes.
“Yeah. Besides, he’s been lookin’ for a way to hang us out to dry since that whole mess with Vanessa. He’d’a made a big thing out of it even if we’d come out all strait-laced and tidy.” Starsky chuckled evilly. “God I love jerking his chain.” Starsky shook his head, still smiling at the thought. “You sure you’re okay, pal?”
“Oh I’m fine now,” he responded, barely able to contain the twitch at the corner of his mouth.
Dobey was rummaging through a file drawer in the squad room when his two detectives returned.
“I sent the statue down to the lab. We should know something about prints pretty quickly. I made it top priority,” Dobey nodded toward Hutch as he headed back toward his office.
“Thanks, Captain.” Hutch followed Starsky to their desks.
“Let’s see, we need to pick a time to go meet with Cecile…” Starsky chewed on his lower lip as he looked over the afternoon’s calendar. They had somehow just ended their leave, a few days early, and already they were getting booked with the follow up on the case. “Maybe we oughtta go right now. Then we’d be back by the time the lab had anything for us.”
“Maybe she should cool her heels until this evening. I don’t want to play around with this house thing while I’m working this case.” Hutch was not nearly as enraptured with the whole project as his partner, who seemed crestfallen at his remark.
“Aw, come on, aren’t ya even a little excited? Think about it, Hutch—no more landlord, no more living in a sardine can full of neighbors—all that room—a HOUSE!”
“Will you keep it down?” Hutch scanned the squadroom a little uneasily.
“What’s the matter with you? You don’t think anybody’s gonna know you bought a house? We do have to turn in address changes, ya know.”
“It’s not final yet.”
“They accepted the offer—all we gotta do is say ‘okay’ and sign a couple papers and go to the bank. It’s almost—or don’t you want to go through with it?”
“I’m a little preoccupied with the case, I guess.”
“Well, so’m I, but I’m still excited.” Starsky exhaled loudly as he watched his partner begin making notes and sorting through the accumulated papers on his desk. “Hutch?”
“What?” He finally looked up at the other man, a little irritated.
“When’re we goin’?”
“Now.” Hutch threw down his pen none too pleasantly and rose from his chair, snatching the jacket off the back of it. “Well?” he prompted Starsky angrily from the door he held open.
“I gotta call her first,” he answered quietly, picking up the phone and dialing Cecile’s number. Hutch walked back into the squadroom and sat against the desk closest to the door while Starsky made the call, reached the agent and confirmed she could meet with them immediately after her meeting. He knew he’d taken out his bad mood, inspired by the statuette on his desk, on his partner, but Starsky would understand, and he was in no mood to launch into heartfelt apologies. He felt hostile and angry and he wanted to lash out. Besides, there were times when he loved Starsky’s child-like enthusiasm and other times he found it as irritating as any parent would. His partner’s tendency to “eat dessert first” sometimes irked the work ethic in Hutch, though he could hardly accuse Starsky of shirking his duties. His joi de vive could be just plain tiring when one felt as mentally lousy as Hutch did at the moment.
“We’re all set,” Starsky announced, picking up his jacket and finally going through the door Hutch held for him.
The meeting with Cecile went smoothly, signing the final purchase agreement and going over their options for financing. An appointment was made for the following day at the bank to meet with a loan officer. Cecile felt their chances were good to be approved for a mortgage, based on the income and credit histories they provided her. Upon returning to the precinct, they were informed that the lab found no prints on the statuette, so Hutch’s mood didn’t improve as the day wore on.
CHAPTER 4
Winter’s coming with its cold compassion,
A killer’s loose and the dead stand trial,
God’s the only witness on file,
Man’s inhumanity to man’s in fashion…
The next two weeks of working on the case proved to be nothing but frustrating. Dogged detective work of following up on every old boyfriend either woman ever had, every co-worker, and every service person connected with wedding plans who had contact with either of them, with special attention to those who had worked with both, yielded nothing of interest. Most all of them either had airtight alibis or just didn’t have any reason to want the women dead. Of course, the latter factor was always open for further discovery, so those who couldn’t account for their whereabouts with back up from a witness were kept on a list of possibles.
Hutch seemed annoyed by the whole upheaval of moving during their investigation, but Starsky’s excitement eventually was a little contagious. They were approved for a loan shortly after applying, and closed the house deal two weeks after the acceptance of their purchase agreement.
Starsky got out of his lease fairly easily, since the landlord had received another inquiry recently from a prospective tenant. Hutch had another two months to go on his, but his landlord split the difference, which gave Hutch a month to live in his familiar surroundings. He also was relieved that his plants could remain in their home until the greenhouse work was finished at the house. Starsky had been perfectly happy to make that one of the three priorities: the new furnace with central air conditioning, a new front porch, and Hutch’s greenhouse. The summer was already heating up, so leaving two air-conditioned apartments for one steamy rattletrap was a little grim for either of them to face.
All decorating activities were put on hold for obvious financial reasons, which meant extensive cleaning of what was there and making do until they had the time and money to start restoring the place. Hutch grumbled about living in the neighborhood “Munster house,” referring to its dire need for paint and landscaping. Starsky generally laughed it off, figuring the neighbors had been looking at it that way for several years, and a few more months wouldn’t offend their delicate sensitivities. He did vow to throw himself into the outdoor yard work whole-heartedly, which was a grim pledge as the summer heat crept up to 90 degrees or higher most days.
As the cleaning and moving activities stepped up pace, both men found themselves more often opting to sleep in their new house than to travel back to their apartments. The new heating and cooling system was working beautifully, the electrician had done his work, and it made more sense to skip the travel time to and from the house.
After cleaning the carpeting and rolling some paint on the interior walls to freshen up the place, it was starting to feel like home. The old furniture was very usable, and in excellent condition for the most part. Starsky happily added his spring and mattress to the four-poster bed in the room he chose to sleep in upstairs, amused to no end that the average person actually had to use a little pair of wooden steps to climb into it. Hutch planned to dispose of the bed in the downstairs bedroom and use his brass bed. He was a little irritated at the cramped, unimpressive nature of the room compared to the upstairs bedrooms, but then he had free run of the largest rooms in the house. Of course, Starsky had handiest access to that attic space, which Hutch definitely coveted. If finished, it would be his favorite room in the house.
The last of Starsky’s belongings were packed late on a Thursday night, with Huggy’s cousin, who owned a delivery service, due the next morning to collect the furniture and cartons in his truck. Starsky had cut a deal with the landlord, selling him most of the furniture except for the watercooler, his fanback chair, his couch, and his springs and mattress.
“Lot of memories in this place,” Hutch leaned against the kitchen counter, eating the last of a cookie he’d found hiding in the cookie jar. The container was probably the only thing Starsky hadn’t packed yet, and now he was carefully wrapping that in newspaper and adding it to the last open carton.
“Yep. Always seems like the down side of movin’, even if you like where you’re goin’. I’m gonna miss it.”
“Any regrets?”
“Nope,” Starsky responded, looking up from the box with a grin. “I love that house.”
“I can tell,” Hutch replied, laughing a little at Starsky’s eternal enthusiasm over their new home.
“You don’t like it much, do ya?” He looked up again at Hutch, this time wearing a very somber expression.
“It’s a great investment, Starsk. I gotta hand it to you this time. If we can ever afford to get it fixed up the way it should be, the resale would put us on easy street.”
“Resale? You wanna sell our house?” Starsky straightened up from his crouch now, obviously completely discombobulated at the concept of losing his dream house.
“Not before we move in, dummy. I mean in a few years, if we get it fixed up, it’ll really bring a great price.”
“I don’t believe this.” Starsky threw his hands in the air and let them slap down at his sides.
“Don’t believe what? You planning on growing old there?” Hutch asked, still smiling.
“Maybe. I was planning on it being home. Not just a piece’a real estate.”
“Starsky, be realistic. Things change. You’re going to get married eventually and want kids and half a house you share with your partner isn’t going to be right for that. Hopefully, before we have to sell it for some reason, we can get it renovated and make a nice return on it.”
“What about you? Why’re you puttin’ all this on me? I ain’t married yet, am I? Besides, that place is big enough to fix up so—we’ve been over all this before. I guess I just gotta accept that you don’t care anything about that house.” Starsky plopped dejectedly onto his couch.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” Starsky responded quietly. Feeling adequately chastised and tremendously guilty for apparently crushing his partner’s feelings, Hutch made his way to the living room. How Starsky could make him pay so dearly for a fleeting moment of insensitivity without even raising his voice annoyed Hutch at the same time it amazed him.
“I’m sorry if I acted like I didn’t care about the house. I didn’t mean for it to sound that way.” He stood there, feeling a bit awkward at Starsky’s lack of response. “Damn it, Starsky, I said I was sorry. Are you going to sit there and pout all night?”
“I’m not pouting. I just…I thought…never mind.”
“You thought what?” Hutch prodded, sitting on the edge of the couch near his partner.
“I thought you were kind of excited about the house. That you liked it too.”
“I do like it.”
“But you’re already thinkin’ about sellin’ it.”
“That’s just being practical, buddy. You’ve gotta think of a house’s resale value. That’s just good business. I didn’t say I wanted to sell it now.”
“Okay.” Starsky looked over at Hutch. “Um, this might not be the greatest time to bring this up, but…”
“What?”
“I’ve been thinkin’ about dividing up the house and everything?”
“Yeah?”
“Doesn’t it seem kinda dumb sometimes? I mean, we got two stairways, all sorts’a room—it’s not like we’d be bumpin’ into each other all the time. And we could have a signal or something if one of us had…company. I was just thinkin’ that there’s this really big bedroom upstairs—”
“The big one that gets the morning sun and has the great view of the whole neighborhood? Yeah, I noticed.”
“Well, I’m takin’ the one on the back of the house—I like that one, and I want to fix up the yard, and it’s real shady from all the trees—but I really was looking at that room you’re gonna use downstairs, and it’s kinda cramped and, well, sorta ugly.”
“I noticed.” Hutch chuckled a little.
“Why don’t we just try it for awhile—just using the house the way we want to? If we find out we’re gettin’ in each other’s way, we can always change it back so we’re on separate floors all the time. I don’t mind taking my company up to the library if you wanna use the living room.”
“I suppose I could just close the French doors if I want some privacy.”
“And I could still go to the kitchen down the back stairs, and the library is on the opposite end of the hall from your room, so even if you came up and went to your room, it wouldn’t have to disturb me.”
“I guess with a little effort, we could make that work pretty well.”
“I’ll help ya move upstairs tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Hutch leaned back in the familiar cushions.
* * * *
Over the next few days, Starsky’s things were moved in and settled in the house. Hutch brought most of his belongings as well, leaving only the furniture and a few last minute things at the apartment he barely occupied anyway. Construction had begun on the greenhouse, and it was expected to be finished within another week or so.
Starsky spent most of his off time in the weed patch that was known as the garden. While Hutch agreed they couldn’t afford professional landscaping services to restore it, he also wasn’t delighted with the prospect of doing it himself. Like a child who volunteers to always clean up after it if he is given a dog, Starsky promised to handle the garden duty. There was no green thumb required at this point; just plenty of muscle, a shovel and several large trash bags.
There was a paint-depraved gazebo in the middle of all if it, with a couple of trellises attached. The roses which should have been growing there had long since turned to brown, petrified claws hanging onto the old wood. The backyard alone was almost 200 feet across by 200 feet deep. The front portion of the lot extended another 100 feet to the street. All of the homes in the area boasted these big yards. They had all been mini-estates in their day, and Starsky couldn’t wait until their house could take its rightful place with the more elegantly maintained homes in the area.
The upper story of the house behind them was visible over the fieldstone wall that ran the full length of the street between the houses on Mulberry Street and those on the street behind it, where their house faced, on Cherry Street. The developers here obviously had a thing for berries all those years ago, Starsky thought, smiling to himself as he hauled yet another filled trashbag to the back of the garage. He had managed to wangle an afternoon off while Hutch testified in court, and he was going to make the most of it, 90-degree weather notwithstanding.
As he returned to the garden, mopping his forehead with the back of his hand, he noticed something in the upstairs window of the house behind them that he hadn’t noticed before: a red flag bearing a white circle in the middle, which was the backdrop for a black swastika. Terrific. Just what I need. End up with some weirdo skinhead teenager for a neighbor. He thought of cleaning up and going over there, making an issue of it…but this is a free country. They might not be able to act on their warped ideas, but no one can stop them from expressing them, he concluded, trying to shrug off the offensiveness of the symbol and go back his gardening. The thought nagged the back of his mind that the flag had not been there before…maybe I didn’t notice it, or maybe whoever lives there is displaying it because of his new neighbor… and that was paranoia. He decided he had overlooked it before, and opted to do his best to ignore it, and the neighbors who displayed it.
* * * *
Hutch arrived home shortly after six, having spent most of the day waiting to testify and only a few minutes actually doing it. He stopped on the way to pick up a couple of pizzas, figuring Starsky was either already dead from heat exhaustion or at best wouldn’t be feeling in the mood to go out. It was a given there was nothing in the kitchen worth fixing. He went in the side door and left the pizzas on the kitchen counter. Looking out the kitchen window, he saw his partner diligently hauling a wheelbarrow full of weeds and sod clumps toward a pile near the garage. He had to hand it to Starsky; after a mere afternoon’s labor, he had most of the garden cleared of the weeds and grasses.
The large stones that had been used to make a border around it, leaving a gap for the path made of flat flagstones was easily visible now. While Hutch was admiring its potential and discarding his jacket and tie, he happened to glance at the house directly behind them. The swastika seemed to leap off the flag that hung like a shade in one of the upstairs windows. He knew it hadn’t been there before, and he wondered what Starsky’s reaction had been. He certainly knew what his was. He stuck the pizzas in the oven to keep them warm and walked out of the air-conditioned comfort of the house back into the heat and humidity of the day.
“Hey, buddy, it’s lookin’ good,” Hutch said cheerfully, determined not to launch the conversation with the flag issue.
“Thanks. I’ve got most of the clean out work done,” Starsky replied, a little breathless. There was a grimy-looking white-gray ball of fabric that used to be Starsky’s tank shirt on one of the large rocks that outlined the garden, and even his red shorts were soaked. “I’ve gotta go take a shower before I pass out. Man, it’s hot out here.”
“That’s a lot of work for one afternoon, pal. I brought pizza home.”
“Great.” Starsky seemed subdued, even more so than just due to his fatigue. Hutch figured he had spotted the neighbors’ “decoration.”
“Starsk, I noticed the flag back there.”
“Yeah, me too. Probably some dumb teenager who thinks it’s cool.”
“Yeah? Well, I plan on walking over there this evening and having a talk with them.”
“What for? It’s their business what they hang in their window.”
“It’s offensive.”
“So is the color of the house next door, but that doesn’t mean we can make them repaint it.” Starsky nodded toward the carnation pink house to their left. It was impeccably maintained, beautifully restored…and eye-splittingly pink.
“There’s a big difference between a pink house and a swastika.” Hutch started back toward the house. “I am going over there after dinner.”
“If you’re doing it for me, don’t. The worst thing in the world you could do would be to let some little pimple-faced weasel think he’s gotten under our skin. Hangin’ that damn thing up there is a way to get attention, to stir something up. And if for some reason whoever hung it there knows I’m Jewish, and that’s why it’s there, I’m not givin’ them the satisfaction of sending my mommy over to their door to make them take it down.” Starsky plodded along behind his partner, glad air conditioning and a shower were only a few more steps away.
“I wasn’t trying to speak for you. It offends me, alright? It denotes fascism, bigotry and genoicide and I don’t like looking at it.”
“I know what the hell it represents, buddy. And my parents and grandparents knew what it represented too, along with a few cousins over in Europe who had the misfortune of living in the wrong place at the wrong time. You’re not tellin’ me any news bulletins here, Hutch.”
“I didn’t know you lost anyone you knew…I guess we never talked about that.”
“It wasn’t anyone I knew.” Starsky pulled two beers out of the refrigerator, handing one to Hutch. “I wasn’t even born yet. But they were relatives my grandmother knew, and my dad knew slightly. The point is, there were a few dead Starskys in Hitler’s death toll, and I don’t ever forget that. But you can’t make someone take something down out of their window because you don’t like it. And to be honest with you, if I took personal exception to every slam on Jews I hear in a given day, I’d be too busy defending my religion to do anything else.”
“What’re you talking about?” Hutch suddenly wondered who on the force or among the people they knew would have made any ethnic or religious slur at Starsky.
“Think about it. Just yesterday, one of the guys in the squad room told a whole bunch of us that he’d sold his car? He was real proud of gettin’ his price since he said the guy tried to ‘jew him down.’ Did ya ever listen to how people talk about a Jewish businessman who makes it big? He’s a scheister, a tightwad, a ‘typical’ Jew—whatever the hell that is—he’s obviously morally corrupt, anyway, if he’s rich. It still happens, Hutch. Every few days I hear something, but I guess after awhile, you learn not to take it all seriously. The guy who sold his car, McAllister in Robbery? He’s a nice guy. I’ve had lunch with him and his partner when you were out sick, and I doubt he even realizes or gave a thought to the fact that I’m Jewish when he used that term. Just like I doubt the neighbors put that flag up because of me. And if they did, well, that’s their right. It’s their house.”
“I wouldn’t picture you being so easy going about all this.”
“This is gonna sound bad, and that’s why I don’t often explain myself. It’s gonna sound like every other bleeding heart minority group who whines for special favors because of the church they go to or the country they were born in or the color of their skin. I don’t believe in drawing those lines either way—for favors or discrimination. But here goes. People have been takin’ pot shots at Jews for centuries… Then Hitler came along with his agenda…the point is, it’s not new, and it won’t probably ever change completely. All I know is my grandmother said ‘be proud of what you are, and don’t forget that you’re one of God’s chosen ones.’ I don’t know about us bein’ some exclusive group of chosen people, ’cause I can’t believe God makes choices like that, but I am proud of what I am. I don’t have to demonstrate on a street corner—but I don’t have to go slithering over to some snot-nosed neighbor and beg him to take a hunk a’ cloth out of his window, either.”
“Okay. Point made. I won’t say anything to them.” Hutch was quiet a moment, sipping his beer and mulling over what his partner had said. “Damn good attitude, partner.”
“I’m gonna grab a quick shower before we eat, okay?” Starsky’s subject change signaled Hutch that the discussion of religious persecution was over. Their respective religious upbringings had never been more than a source of additional holidays and learning experiences for each other. That it should be an issue had never occurred to either of them. And so it never was…until the flag appeared in that window.
If their conversation had set a serious tone, it was lost when Starsky returned and they dug into the pizzas. They were busily mapping out landscaping plans and final finishing plans for the greenhouse. The glass work was done, so Hutch was going to begin bringing his “babies” over as soon as they had installed shelves and hooks, a project that would occupy most of Saturday. Having been initially skeptical about this living arrangement, Hutch had to admit to himself he was oddly content. It was nice sharing a house with Starsky, even if he didn’t know exactly how to put that into words to his partner without it sounding strange or awkward. The most natural explanation he could think of was that it felt like home. Maybe he didn’t have a wife and kids, as planned—or at least not yet—but why should that preclude having a house and feeling the warmth and the companionship of a family? If Starsky wondered why his housemate had an odd, borderline sappy, grin on his face as he ate, he didn’t ask. After all, he was guilty of a similar expression himself.
* * * *
Minnie, sainted woman that she was, had volunteered to clean out and lay shelf paper in the kitchen cupboards and drawers. While it was their hope to eventually redo the kitchen (since someone in the 1950’s had seen fit to install glossy-enameled cupboards with ultra-modern handles), for now, the clean-up work would have to do. Starsky had been drafted to help with that task, and while the two of them laughed and argued over the work, Hutch slid upstairs to take a shower and leisurely unpack some of his books and other belongings in the library.
The jangling phone startled him out of his peaceful project of organizing his books on his portion of the full wall of shelves. He answered it by the sixth ring.
“Dobey here. We’ve got another one, Hutch—same M.O. as Sandra and Madeleine Nolan. There’s a black and white at the scene. 124 Vista Court, Apartment 3. Nedloe and Elliot are on another case, so I need you and Starsky to get down there right away.”
“Damn it. Will do, Captain.” Hutch hung up and hurried into the bedroom to pull on his jeans and a shirt. When he made his way down to the kitchen, he began dreading the whole situation. How in hell could he walk into that girl’s bedroom and… He shook off that thought and entered the brightly lit room. Minnie was solicitously smoothing out a piece of shelf paper on an upper cupboard shelf while Starsky held her waist, offering the expected flirtatious remarks while she pretended to be shocked.
“Starsky! Does your mother know what a nasty little boy she has?” Minnie was chiding him as he completed what she must have considered one of his more inspired lines.
“Starsk, we’ve gotta go,” Hutch cut in abruptly. “That was Dobey—there’s another one.”
“Another—? Oh my God.” Starsky hurried to the hall closet and retrieved his holster from the hook on the back of the door. Hutch was fastening his as Starsky returned to the kitchen.
“I’ll finish up here,” Minnie volunteered, climbing down from her position of kneeling on the cupboard.
“Thanks, Min. Just go ahead and lock up. There’s probably no point in waiting for us,” Hutch said, heading out the door.
“Thanks again, schweetheart,” Starsky gave her a peck on the cheek and hurried after his partner.
“It’s been almost four months since Sandra’s death.” Hutch shook his head. I thought the SOB had given up.” He stuck the mars light on the roof of the Torino as they backed out of the driveway and sped down the street, siren blaring.
“Think the neighbors are gonna put up with us very long?” Starsky noticed a few people migrating to their porches or front windows as they raced toward the address Dobey had given Hutch.
* * * *
Starsky brought the car to a respectable screeching halt by the curb in front of a large frame house which contained several one-room apartments. On the third floor they could hear the commotion of the uniformed team, crime lab people and the coroner’s office representative swarming on the murder site. As they approached the doorway, weaving through the clog of residents and police that occupied the narrow, low-ceilinged hall, Starsky caught Hutch by the arm.
“You talk to the crime lab guys and the uniforms—stay out of the bedroom. I’ll deal with the scene, okay?”
“Starsky, this is our case. I have to—”
“I’ll be the eyes for both of us on this one. I won’t miss anything important. There’s no reason for you to have to see that…again,” Starsky whispered.
“Okay. I’ll see what the lab boys’ve got.”
Starsky approached the bedroom doorway, took a deep breath, and found his nostrils filled with the smell of fresh blood. He felt more like vomiting now. The deep breath had done nothing to alleviate that impulse. It had to be almost 85 degrees in the apartment. It was not air conditioned, and the smell of death was heavy in the air. The M.E. was just leaving the room as he arrived.
“What’ve we got?”
“Female Caucasian, mid-20s, blonde, petite—just like the other two. Multiple stab wounds, some bruising—this one fought back a little more than the others—you can see by the way the room’s essentially trashed. Also, she has more bruises and scrapes and a couple of very superficial cuts that would indicate they were wrestling for the knife at some point. Yup, he got a live one here,” the M.E. commented. Noting Starsky’s grim expression, and realizing he’d succumbed to the insensitivity that sometimes accompanied seeing too many mangled bodies in too short a span of time, he moved on to a more factual discussion. “I’d say time of death was about five o’clock.” It was now well past nine.
“Thanks, Pete.” Starsky took in the scene, reliving his discovery of Sandra’s body all over again. This young woman could have been her sister. She was lying diagonally across the bed, the spread having been somewhat smoothed around her, with a single red rose clutched in her right hand. It was frightening how yellow her blonde hair looked next to the bluish-whiteness of her skin.
“…like I was saying, Sergeant, I found the receipt right in here by the dresser.” A young uniformed officer was leading Hutch into the bedroom. Before Starsky could object, Hutch was there, in the cramped, stifling little room, the air heavy with the odor of blood. He watched Hutch register the scene in front of him, reel almost visibly, but maintain his composure.
“That was the only thing out of the ordinary?” Hutch forced himself to turn away from the dead girl and focus on the young officer who had felt it necessary to show him exactly where he had found the small cash register receipt from Al’s Sporting Goods for a new basketball. Of course, assuming it didn’t belong to the deceased was a bit sexist if not silly, though no such item was found among her things.
“That was it. Well, other than…you know,” he replied, nodding toward the dead girl.
“Right. Thanks.” He watched as the other left the room and turned back to face Starsky, who was already urging him out of the room. But it was too late. The image of this dead woman, and his own dead fiancée, was already stamped indelibly on his brain. “Who found her?” he asked.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” He gave Hutch a gentle push toward the door, and they both exited the bedroom and directed the coroner’s people to go ahead and load the body in the body bag. “Landlady found her. I think that must be her over there,” Starsky indicated a short, stout woman with curly gray hair. She was dressed in a bathrobe and slippers.
“Are you the landlady?” Hutch asked.
“Mildred Homister,” she replied.
“The victim’s name—she was one of your tenants, obviously,” Starsky spoke up.
“Coral Rutherford. Poor thing. She would have been married in a week.” Mrs. Homister shook her head slowly. She was shaking almost visibly. “Dear God, I’ve never seen anything so horrible!”
“What brought you up here to look for her tonight?” Starsky continued. He was keeping one eye on Hutch, but his partner seemed to have handled the murder scene as professionally as he handled everything else. If it had torn him up inside, he was hiding it well, as usual.
“Coral was late with her rent, by a few weeks. I told her that was all right—she was a nurse’s aide, didn’t make a big salary. I know she had lots of bills with the wedding coming up. She promised to pay me when she got paid, which would have been yesterday. She works nights, so when I saw her come home around eight this morning, I didn’t want to bother her. I figured she probably hadn’t been to the bank yet, and she is always tired when she gets home.
“I thought it odd, though, after she ran her errands this afternoon, she didn’t come by to pay the rent. I waited, then I went to the door about six—her shift starts at seven—but there was no answer. I thought she must have slipped out while I was making dinner. I decided to try one more time, around six forty-five, in case she couldn’t come to the door for some reason the first time. When I knocked, the door opened a little on its own. I came inside…and that’s when I found her.” Mrs. Homister ran a hand back through her hair, obviously distressed. “So close to her wedding!”
“Do you know her fiancé?” Hutch asked.
“His name is Stu—I assume short for Stuart. I don’t know his last name. Seems like such a nice young man. He works for the tool and die company not too far from here.”
“Did you see or hear anyone else entering the building between, say, four and seven?”
“A few of the tenants come home around five-thirty or so, getting out of work at five and all.”
“Let me get a list of their names from you.” Starsky dutifully wrote down each of three names and apartment numbers while Hutch watched the gurney being wheeled through to the door. He left his partner with the landlady long enough to help the uniformed men dispel the little gathering of gawkers and get the body out of the apartment.
Next, they visited the apartments of the residents who had arrived home from work close to the supposed time of death. The majority had to be hauled into their apartments away from the spectator group near the dead woman’s unit, but none had anything worthwhile to add. No one had seen any visitors or heard anything out of the ordinary upon arriving home.
After exchanging a few final words with the M.E. and the crime lab team, the detectives exited the apartment house and were relieved to breathe in the warm but fresh August night air.
“Kyle, the uniform who found the receipt? He also found a hand-written wedding guest list,” Hutch stated grimly. “I have her address book and the guest list with me.”
“Shit. Same drill. So we’re looking for some lunatic who has it in for brides. Why? Spurned by one? Lost one? Wants one but can’t get one?” Starsky was pacing a little near the Torino. Residents were gathered on their lawns, enthralled with the real-life drama unfolding in their neighborhood…the vultures of morbid curiosity gathered on their perches. Hutch slid into the passenger seat, and Starsky got behind the wheel, starting up the car.
“Better head down to Metro and do our thing,” Starsky said flatly, referring to the report and going over the dead woman’s address book and guest list.
Relieved that the victim’s family and fiancé were going to be notified by the first officers on the scene, they put together an initial report for Dobey and set up a staggering itinerary for themselves starting first thing in the morning. They would have to question the family, the fiancé, go over the guest list—hopefully with a family member or friend who could give them some background information.
* * * *
They rode home essentially in silence. Sandra’s death was heavily on both their minds, having been so vividly re-enacted in Coral Rutherford’s tiny apartment. There was no logical pattern to the killer’s acts…his timing was erratic—one month between Madeleine Nolan’s death and Sandra’s death, now four months until he killed again. But his M.O. was unmistakable.
“Looks like a hell of a day ahead of us, buddy.” Starsky turned off the engine when he had stopped the car near the rickety door of the slanting garage. One more thing that needed extensive repair before the Torino or the Mercury would be entrusted to its care.
“Yeah. I’m glad to be home now, though,” Hutch sighed as he got out of the car. After he said it, he realized how much like home it was starting to feel…home being a safe haven where you can rest and heal. Philosophical thoughts were cut short by a string of blistering curses from Starsky as he rattled the knob on the side door. It had a perverse propensity for sticking at the most unpredictable and generally annoying times. It finally relented, and they made their way inside, locking up for the night and dowsing lights as they traveled toward the second floor.
“Hutch?” Starsky paused in the middle of the hall, before they parted company to their respective rooms.
“Yeah?”
“You okay with all this? I mean, I didn’t want you to have to see…you know, back at that apartment.”
“I know. I’m all right, Starsk.”
“Okay. If you…um, can’t sleep or anything…I’m gonna leave my door open.”
“You don’t have to. I’m fine, really.” Hutch smiled faintly.
“Okay. G’night, buddy.”
“Sleep tight, pal. Set your alarm for five-thirty.” Hutch was starting down the hall, waving an instructing finger at his partner.
“Six.” Starsky retorted.
“Five forty-five.”
“Deal.” Starsky grinned slightly as he retreated into his bedroom.
* * * *
Hutch woke up to his own groaning voice. He realized he had been tossing and turning with unpleasant thoughts about Sandra and finding her body, but he had dozed at some point, and now was awake again. He got up and went to the bathroom, then splashed cold water on his face. It was hard finding his way in the dark, since the twists and turns of the new house were more elaborate and less familiar than those at Venice Place. He walked stealthily down the hall toward Starsky’s room. As promised, the door was away from the frame by about a foot. He could hear Starsky’s even breathing as he stood in the doorway, watching the hump in the bed rise up and down where the moonlight illuminated it.
He stood there a moment, not sure what to do. He wanted to say something, anything, to rouse his partner and not have to go off somewhere by himself and think about Sandra’s death-whitened corpse clutching that single red rose. Starsky had been so right to try to keep him away from the corpse of Coral Rutherford, but they were the detectives on the case, and he couldn’t very well tell the uniformed cops there that he didn’t want to see the body.
“Hutch?” Starsky’s groggy voice startled him. He suddenly realized he had been standing there with his hand on the doorknob, thinking.
“Sorry I woke you, buddy.”
“That’s okay.” Starsky pulled himself up in the bed. “Can’t sleep?”
“Havin’ a little trouble, I guess.” Hutch was uneasy about actually taking Starsky up on disturbing him, and he was still loitering in the hall.
“Come on,” Starsky said, motioning to him to come in and then patted the bed. “Park it right there.” Hutch moved slowly across the room and sat near the foot of the bed. “Rough night, huh? To tell ya the truth, I didn’t feel too good about what we saw there tonight either. Made me think about Sandra again—not that I don’t think of her anyway, but it had to be rough for you.”
“Worse than I thought. It seems like…I don’t know. Like it’s harder now…harder than when I saw it…thinking about it…”
“That’s because when you saw it tonight it was somebody else. But when you remember it, it’s Sandra.”
“I guess that’s it.” Hutch pulled himself more completely onto the foot of the bed. Only his long legs had allowed him to make the initial jump without the steps. Starsky was as delighted as any respectable five-year-old would be with the big old four-poster. To Hutch, it seemed like a hell of a lot of trouble to get in and out of bed.
“Ya know, you’re doin’ really great, buddy. I mean, that you can even work this case the way you do…don’t feel funny if it gets you down once in awhile.”
“It gets me down all the time. Sometimes I’d just like a rest from it…from feeling so lousy all the time.”
“You’ll get a rest from it, pal. Trust me. That part of it does get better. One of these days you’ll laugh at something and you’ll really feel the laugh like you used to. Or you’ll be able to look at the good things you have, and be happy you’ve got them—instead of just feelin’ lousy about what you lost.”
“I’m way ahead of you there, buddy. I know what I’ve got that’s good, and maybe I’m finally smart enough to appreciate it.” Hutch was quiet a minute. “I know I’ve been about as much fun as a root canal about this house deal,” Hutch paused for Starsky’s chortle, “but I think tonight, maybe for the first time, when I first got home from work and then when we came back tonight…I haven’t had a real home in a long time, Starsk. I’ve lived on my own, in an apartment—or with Van—but that doesn’t qualify…I guess what I’m workin’ like hell to say is that a house or apartment is just a dwelling. It takes something meaningful to make it ‘home’. I felt that for the first time in a long time when I got home tonight. I felt like I was ‘home.’“
Hutch waited for some response from the shadow-bathed figure sitting up in the bed. None came. “Starsky? Are you awake?” Since Starsky had pulled his pillows up behind him and was leaning against the headboard, Hutch thought he might have lost his partner during his faltering explanation.
“Yeah,” came the strained reply. A sniff or two followed.
“What’s the matter?”
“I just…” Starsky took a deep breath. “What you said…means a whole lot to me.” Another sniff, and then there was movement while Starsky wiped at his eyes quickly with the back of his hand. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. At least now you feel as choked up and miserable as I do.” Hutch waited a moment, and they both laughed softly.
“Wanna go raid the ‘fridge?”
“Starsky, it’s three in the morning. If we do that now—”
“We’ll be getting up two or three hours earlier. So what? I’m hungry. Come on.” He slid over the side, feet landing expertly on the wooden steps, and made it to the floor without stumbling. Hutch wondered if he could accomplish the same feat in the dark at three a.m. Probably not. Of course, he wouldn’t be all that motivated to try, either.
* * * *
All day Wednesday was a grim experience, interviewing members of Coral Rutherford’s family, her overwrought fiancé and a list of her friends and co-workers. Just when it seemed the day could not become more depressing, they returned to Metro to a stack of urgent messages from Ian Gardner, Madeleine Nolan’s fiancé. Hutch picked up the phone and dialed the number, with Starsky listening in on the extension.
“Mr. Gardner, this is Sergeant Hutchinson. I just received your messag—”
“I received something in the mail.”
“What was it?”
“A photograph,” he responded. A long pause followed. “An ungodly, horrible photograph!”
“Of what?”
“It’s Madeleine…as she must have looked…after…”
“My God.” Hutch had brief eye contact with Starsky, but couldn’t stop to consider that he might receive such a parcel himself one of these days. “Obviously you’ve opened and handled it, but don’t touch it any more than necessary—”
“Don’t worry,” he replied emphatically, as if touching the photo would be the last thing he’d ever want to do.
“My partner and I will be right there.” Hutch hung up the phone and hurried out the door with Starsky close on his heels.
* * * *
Ian Gardner was not an easily ruffled man. He was British by birth, very quiet and refined in his demeanor, and generally completely composed. The man who swung open the apartment door was wild-eyed and jittery, looking a bit like Dr. Jekyll halfway through the transformation, with hair that had escaped from its neat style and brushed the top of his glasses, his necktie askew on his blue dress shirt and large patches of sweat visible under his arms.
“It’s on the coffee table,” he directed the two detectives as they entered his small, neatly kept living room. Hutch picked up the photograph, using a handkerchief, and read the bizarre message neatly printed in red ink on the back of it. “‘White lace and red roses.’ Sick bastard.” Hutch tossed the photo back on the coffee table.
“It was in the mailbox by the front door.”
“Addressed just like any other envelope, but no postage,” Starsky observed, examining the plain white business envelope with the name and address neatly typed on the front of it. “I would guess a hand delivery.”
“You think the man who did this—oh, dear God—you think he brought it here himself?” Ian demanded.
“Possible. Might be part of the rush.” Starsky regretted being so blasé in his terminology, but sometimes that was better than giving in to the emotionalism of the moment. Ian seemed to be rising to the occasion much better the more clinical the discussion became.
“Mr. Gardner, as you can appreciate, this kind of case could cause a panic,” Hutch began. “We have reason to believe he may have killed another young woman just last night.” Ian’s face registered surprise, and Hutch hastened to add, “We are very hopeful that this information will not be released to the press. This nut is obviously ready to come out in the open and claim responsibility for these crimes now, and turning it into a media circus isn’t going to help anyone—”
“Except maybe some other poor girl like Madeleine. The community doesn’t even know what kind of madman is out there, what kind of danger they’re in. If another young woman dies this way, it’s the fault of the police department for keeping silent!”
“And if this looney tune thrives on attention, he’s going to be motivated by the publicity to keep on killing. To make himself more famous.” Starsky really didn’t blame the man for his concern, and there was a grain of truth to it. However, giving a serial killer a title and front page coverage would bring every copy cat, lunatic, fanatic, professional confessor, reporter and sleazy true crime writer out of the woodwork to hamper the investigation. He expressed this thought as well. “You see, when we turn this into a free-for-all in the press, we reel in every bozo with a screw loose to confess to it, every lead and development is threatened with press exposure…it will ultimately hamper the investigation significantly, and that could lead to more deaths.”
“What do you do now?”
“Take this to the crime lab, see what they come up with and we keep following up every possible lead on all three cases, with special attention on the new set of information the most recent case has generated. Mr. Gardner, my fiancée and my unborn daughter died because of this lunatic. We have no intention of sitting back and letting him get away with it.”
“I didn’t realize your lady was expecting.”
“I found out earlier the day she was murdered. So you see, we have a very great motivation in solving this case. You don’t need to worry that we aren’t following it up in the manner we think will lead to an arrest the fastest.”
“Of course not. I’m sorry if I implied that you weren’t. It’s just…Madeleine and I were so very happy. We were going to move to London for awhile, live with my family there…it was like seeing an entire lifetime shatter in an instant.”
“Very well said,” Hutch replied, shaking his head slightly. “We’ll let you know as soon as there are any new developments. My guess is he probably wore gloves to handle all of it, but you never know. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He moved toward the door and Starsky followed. They were reasonably confident that Ian Gardner would not sell his story to the nearest tabloid.
* * * *
The lab came back with results that were predictably disappointing. There were no usable prints on the envelope, except for Ian’s.
“Just when I think this guy can’t top himself, he manages,” Hutch commented bitterly as he added the notes on the lab’s findings to their growing case file. The slam of the file cabinet drawer almost raised Starsky and a few other detectives off their chairs. “Sick son of a bitch,” he spat angrily.
“We’re gonna get him, partner. He’s getting frisky now. He’s gonna slip up and when he does, we’ll be right behind him to catch him and hang his ass.”
“Why doesn’t that console me?” Hutch sneered back, plopping in his desk chair and angrily rifling through his desk drawer.
“Because you’re pissed off and you don’t want to be consoled,” Starsky answered matter-of-factly, opening a candy bar and taking a bite. Hutch suddenly realized they’d worked through lunch and it was approaching dinner. Starsky hadn’t complained, letting his partner pile-drive his way through the first day of investigating the Rutherford murder and also the discovery of the grisly photo.
“What is the point of all this?” Hutch slammed the desk drawer. “Some psycho is out there killing women and we’re pushing papers!” he yelled, slapping a file folder loudly on the desk for emphasis.
“Hey, Hutch, come on—”
“Don’t you start with your ‘rah-rah, we’re gonna get him’ speech! We don’t know that! In the meantime, he’s walking right up to doors and leaving calling cards—he waltzed right into the fucking precinct and left a trinket on my desk and we still don’t know who the hell he is! Apparently, no one around here can find their ass with both hands and a roadmap!” Hutch stormed out of the office, leaving Starsky speechless. When his partner summed it all up that way, their inability to get a solid lead did look pretty pathetic. Dobey finally emerged from his office and came to lean against Starsky’s desk, facing the detective as he rocked back in his chair, still nibbling unenthusiastically on his candy.
“He’s not handling this, is he?” Dobey asked candidly.
“Most of the time he is. Worst part of it is, he’s got a point.” Starsky dropped his feet from the desk and ended up sitting straight, much to Dobey’s amazement. He was still fully expecting the day to come where Starsky would make that move, the chair would slip and he’d fly backwards and break his neck. That potential disaster was averted yet one more time. “I’d say he was losin’ it too if the guy hadn’t walked right in here and left him that statue. I mean, it is pretty pathetic that he could come in here and do that and we still don’t have a lead.”
“Think he’ll pull it together? This is a major case, Starsky. I understand Hutch wanting to be in on it, and I understand you not wanting to give it to another team, but we can’t afford a lot of foul-ups on this. Women are dying, and we’re about this far away from a public panic and a nationally-known serial killer situation complete with a cheesy nickname and tabloid headlines.” Dobey was gesturing with a nearly non-existent space between his thumb and forefinger.
“I know that, Cap. I think Hutch’ll come around. He blows up once in awhile, but he’s handling himself just fine on the case.”
“All right. But keep me posted. And don’t keep this case if there’s a danger of it getting messed up. I’m going to rely on your judgement, Starsky.”
“We won’t let ya down, Cap’n.”
“How is that house of yours coming along?” Dobey asked as he stood near his door, ready to retreat into his office.
“Well, we’ve got some painting done and I tore out all the weeds and overgrowth and dug up the garden area, so it’s comin’ along. Why don’t ya stop by this weekend—bring the family? The yard is a kinda ugly, but things are cleared up enough to cook out. We can give you guys the grand tour, such as it is.”
“Thank you for the invitation. I’ll ask Edith and let you know.”
“Okey-dokey. I better go find that crazy partner of mine.” Starsky was on his feet and out the door quickly, wondering just where Hutch would have holed up this time.
* * * *
Hutch was halfway to the house before he realized he had taken off like a bat out of hell from the precinct and left Starsky without a ride. Oh, well. If you can’t find a ride in a precinct full of cop cars, you’re a pretty shitty excuse for a detective, Hutch fumed to himself. So why am I mad at Starsky? Like the proverbial mountain, he was there. That’s as good a reason as any. Hutch pulled into the driveway and parked near the garage, next to the Torino. As he walked to the side door, he noticed the swastika flag again in the neighbors’ window. He was still sorely tempted to go over there and give them a piece of his mind, and he was in just the mood to do it. But Starsky’s point about giving some adolescent neo-Nazi that kind of satisfaction was certainly a valid one. Of course, that was assuming that it was just a rebellious teenager and not a hang-out for fanatics. Might be the reason the house was so cheap—backs up to a hotbed of lunatics.
Hutch pulled a cold beer out of the refrigerator and went into the living room. Something caught his attention on the stairs. On each step was a single red rose, leading all the way to the second floor hall. Determined not to disturb any evidence, he hurried back to the kitchen and, depositing the beer on the counter, drew his gun and slithered up the back stairs. He carefully inspected each room until he spotted the continuation of the path of roses. They stopped at the door of his bedroom. He slowly pushed the door away from the frame, and he was completely unprepared for what he saw there. On his bed, clad in her wedding dress, was Sandra…he blinked and tried to reason with himself that that was impossible…and upon clearer focus, he could see it was a very life-like mannequin, arms crossed over her heart as if in her coffin, a single red rose beneath her hands.
Above the bed, scrawled on the freshly painted white wall in haphazard red-brown letters: “ONLY ROSES FOR THE BRIDE.” He backed out of the room and leaned against the wall in the hallway for support. The artificial bride’s corpse was still in his line of vision. He gulped a couple of times to moisten his throat, which had gone completely dry. He wasn’t sure if he was going to vomit or pass out or lose his mind. The mental imagery was so bizarre, that initial moment of shock when he saw the form on the bed and actually thought, for just a split second, that it was Sandra…it all seemed to be swirling around him in a kaleidoscope of horror. Taking a deep breath and resolving not to allow himself to be overcome by the whole ordeal, he turned away from the hideous sight and retreated down the back stairs to the kitchen. He dialed Starsky’s direct extension. It was grabbed on the first ring.
“Starsky.” The voice was less than pleasant.
“Starsk, it’s me—”
“Hutch—is something wrong?” There was immediate concern in the voice now.
“I’m at the house—there’s something here you’ve got to see. Um, I guess we need lab people…”
“What is it?”
“He’s been in the house, Starsky. He left a souvenir.”
“Have you checked the rest of the house?”
“No.” Hutch realized now how little like a cop he was acting. Starsky’s voice was snapping him back to reality. “But I’m going to right now. I don’t think he’s still here.”
“Maybe you ought to just wait for me to get there. I’ll call for back up just in case. Stay put. No sense in givin’ him the advantage.”
“Okay.” Hutch hung up the phone, not thoroughly convinced he shouldn’t be searching the house. After another moment passed, he did just that, from basement to attic. Nothing was disturbed, and there was no sign of forced entry. He was in the living room when he heard the screech of tires and roar of sirens out front. Starsky had commandeered a black and white, and with Dobey in the passenger seat, was driving it like a man possessed. Behind them was another black and white, and the crime lab van.
Starsky was racing across the ratty lawn toward the side door with Dobey several paces behind with two uniformed officers. Hutch met them at the door.
“It’s upstairs. I think you should take the back stairs, because part of it’s on the front staircase. I’ve checked the rest of the house. It’s clear—no sign of forced entry.” Hutch had pulled himself under control well, but Starsky still gave his arm a brief squeeze as he hurried past him.
Starsky led the way upstairs, with Dobey, Hutch and the other officers close behind. He spotted a few of the roses near Hutch’s bedroom door, and braced himself for something unpleasant. The sight seemed to shock him almost as much as it had his partner. He pulled forward one of the lab people who had joined the group and instructed him to photograph the scene from all angles. Hutch was relieved to have Starsky in the driver’s seat, with Dobey looking over his shoulder. He felt a little ineffectual following the lab people around and pointing out the roses on the staircase, but he still had no desire to spend much time in that room looking at the mannequin wearing a dress almost identical to the one Sandra would have worn on their wedding day—but instead, wore on the day of her death.
“This’s blood, Cap.” Starsky motioned to another member of the crime lab team, who began taking scrapings from several spots on the grisly message.
“No sign of forced entry…who else has keys to your house?” Dobey led the way out of the room.
“No one that we know of. I’ll get a hold of the realtor and find out if she knows of any other possibles on that.” Starsky scratched his head and watched the lab team checking the room out carefully, even picking up hairs from the carpeting. He snorted a little laugh to himself. As in most cases, they’d most likely end up with a bag of hair and dust bunnies traceable to the occupant of the room.
The mannequin was wrapped in plastic and removed for further analysis at the lab. The roses were bagged and the stairs meticulously inspected for any traces of hair, dirt, footprints or any other sort of trace evidence. This, of course, gave them more busy work to follow up on—now they could try badgering every source of mannequins in the area. More dead end busy work, Starsky thought defeatedly. He went out to join Hutch and the uniformed officers on the lawn in deciding how they would split up to question the neighbors. Hutch had already claimed the Mulberry Street homes, planning to get a good look at the swastika flag’s owners. Starsky decided he would go along on that little errand. They would leave the other neighbors to the black and white units.
The house in question was fairly well-kept, though the lawn and shrubbery could have been better maintained. The large white house was about the same size as their own, if not slightly bigger, with black shutters and a red front door. Hutch rang the bell, and they waited for a response. Since it was the middle of the work day, it wouldn’t be unusual for no one to be home, so they were about to leave when the door opened and a bleary-eyed man peered out at them. He was unshaven, in an undershirt and shorts, probably in his mid-30s. His blond hair was close-cropped in almost a crew cut.
“Yeah?” His demeanor was not friendly.
“I’m Detective Hutchinson, this is Detective Starsky. We’d like to ask you a few questions—”
“About what?”
“We’re your new neighbors, directly behind you,” Starsky spoke up. “Someone broke in and—”
“You accusin’ me of something, Jew-boy?”
“Listen, you—”
“Hutch, let it go—it’s not worth the effort. No, we’re not accusing you of anything, Mr….?”
“Schoemacher.”
“Mr. Schoemacher. We had an intruder enter the house at some point today, and we’re trying to determine if any of the neighbors saw or heard anything out of the ordinary.”
“I work nights. I’ve been asleep all afternoon…til now. I gotta get ready for work and get something to eat, so if that’s all…” He started closing the door.
“No, that’s not all,” Hutch interrupted, reaching out a hand to push the door back from closing. “I just want you to know I’m going to be watching you…very closely. Just keep that in mind.”
“Yeah? And I don’t want you and your Jew on my property again—keep that in mind.”
Starsky grabbed the arm that was headed to stop the slamming door yet again. “Hutch, let it go. He wants a scene. We’re not givin’ him one.”
“What’s with you? Doesn’t it bother you—”
“Not here. Let’s check with the other neighbors and get this over with.” Starsky started down the front steps. Hutch was a little dumbfounded. In the old days, this whole discussion would have been reversed. Starsky was usually the one to swing first and ask questions later. Hutch considered his partner’s restraint and maturity to be impressive.
A thorough check of all the neighbors didn’t reveal any new information. No one had seen or heard anything unusual. The lab reported that the message on Hutch’s wall was indeed written in blood, and traces of it were human, possibly Sandra’s. The prevailing opinion was that a small portion of Sandra’s blood had been mixed with the blood of a goat to produce enough to paint the message. No other promising results had been gleaned from the evidence by a little after seven, when Starsky announced he was finished with the day and was ready to go home. The subject of Schoemacher and his anti-Semitism hadn’t come up again, but the moment they were alone in the Mercury and headed away from the precinct toward home, Hutch revived it.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re so calm about that fanatic that lives behind us.”
“I’m not calm about it.”
“Starsky, for God’s sake, will you say something? Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking that all my life I wanted a house like ours, and that I love that house and I was so excited about the whole thing…and now this happens. I just don’t wanna talk about it. And goin’ over there and makin’ a scene so he can have you hauled up on assault charges isn’t gonna solve anything. It’s just one of those things.”
“You’re not that calm about it, Starsk. I know you.”
“What do you want to hear me say?” Starsky turned away from staring out the passenger window to gazing penetratingly at his partner. “Do you want me to say that it hurts like hell to be called names and treated like a piece of shit because of your religion? I think that’s kind of obvious. In my neighborhood back home, we were such a mixed bag that ethnic slurs didn’t accomplish a hell of a lot. Somebody might call me a ‘kike,’ and I’d call him a ‘wop,’ or whatever, and we’d either end up friends or beat the hell out of each other. Most of the time we didn’t pick those fights because only a tiny handful of the people there were WASPs. Most of us could be called by some kind of ethnic slur, so tossing ’em at each other was kinda silly.” Starsky sighed.
“First real taste of it I got was when I moved out to LA to live with Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al. I was real popular in high school back home, but out here—they thought I talked funny, I dressed funny, I was the wrong religion—hell, even at home I was out of my element. Uncle Al was raised Jewish but he converted to being Catholic when he married Aunt Rosie, so I finally just blended with the atmosphere and gave up.”
“Didn’t they make any attempt to respect your faith?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess. There was a menorah in the house for Hanukkah, but it didn’t mean much to anybody but me. And the other holidays—I don’t know. They kinda fell by the wayside. I know I don’t practice it now the way I ought to, but that doesn’t change the fact that’s what I am.”
“Starsk, if you want to move out of that house, you know I’ll understand.”
“I don’t want to move. That bastard’s not gonna take that away from us.” Starsky leaned back in the seat. “It’s just something I’ve gotta try to ignore.”
“I’m probably guilty of not respecting your religion either. I mean, I don’t give much thought to what holiday it might be on the Jewish calendar.”
“Yeah, because you don’t look at me and see a Jew—or a guy from New York, or a guy whose family was poor—you look at me and you see me.” Starsky smiled. “So if you forget a few Jewish holidays, it’s probably my fault for not teachin’ ’em to ya.”
“I notice you taught me about Hanukkah—the one where I feel guilty if I don’t buy you a present every night for a week.”
“Hey, you wanna respect my religion, doncha?”
“Turkey,” Hutch retorted, chuckling a little.
“I’m not gonna let that looney behind us be a problem. He can have his little flag and run around thinking he’s part of the master race if it makes him feel better. My grandmother used to say that men who aspire to be dictators do so to compensate for having deficient genitals.”
“Your grandmother said that?” Hutch’s eyes widened as he pulled into the driveway.
“Well, not to me, but I heard her say it to my mother once. I know they giggled about it plenty.”
“I know I’ll never look at Schoemacher the same way again,” Hutch responded, laughing a little.
“Listen, I’m gonna clean things up upstairs. You stay put down here, okay?” Starsky said as they entered the kitchen.
“That’s not fair, Starsk. I’ll give you a hand.”
“No you won’t. Just take the load off in the living room and I’ll go up and get things cleaned up.” Starsky started pulling cleaning supplies out of the narrow broom closet in the corner of the large kitchen. When he straightened up and turned, Hutch was right behind him and surprised him by pulling him into a close hug.
“What would I do without you, huh?” Hutch didn’t let go.
“More cleaning?” Starsky offered, returning the pressure. Hutch laughed, and pulled back, still holding Starsky by his upper arms.
“You were right.”
“About what?” Starsky was completely puzzled by his cheerful partner’s behavior, especially in light of the ugly day they’d both had.
“I felt that laugh.” He released Starsky from the two-handed clutch, and patted his shoulder. “Thank you.”
“It’s been a lousy day, buddy. We both need a laugh or two. See if you can find anything good on the tube tonight. I won’t be long with this.” He raised the bucket and mop slightly to illustrate his point as he started up the back stairs.
Hutch went to the downstairs study which they had turned into a TV room and looked up the night’s listings. And he truly did wonder what he would have ever done if Starsky hadn’t survived his brush with death at Gunther’s hands. He shook off the grim thought and relaxed on Starsky’s old couch, listening to the sounds of life and movement from the second floor…and he relished the warm feeling of being home.
* * * *
Starsky mumbled a few obscenities at the stubborn stains on Hutch’s wall that refused to budge. He had gotten the majority of the gruesome message removed but a sufficient trace of it remained to make repainting the wall a given. He also figured that Hutch wouldn’t really be comfortable sleeping in there, but would of course deny that and try it anyway. Feeling the drain of the long day, he plodded to the linen closet, pulled out a fresh set of sheets and made up the guest bedroom across from his room. Glad to be finished at last with the work, he returned the cleaning supplies to the laundry room behind the kitchen and went to join his partner in the TV room.
Hutch was sound asleep on the couch, TV Guide open on his stomach, almost obscured by one large hand that had been holding it. The TV was on, so Starsky settled into a nearby chair and started channel-hopping with the remote until he found an episode of “Lou Grant.” Relieved to lose himself in someone else’s angst for awhile, he settled in to watch. His own dozing was short-lived when his partner’s agitated vocalizations shook him out of his sleep. Damn it. The nightmares are back. “Hey, buddy, it’s me. Come on, wake up.” Starsky got up and crouched next to the couch. “Hutch, you’re dreaming. Come on, partner.” He shook Hutch gently, and the other finally opened his eyes, a little frantically at first, until he focused on Starsky.
“It’s you,” he mumbled sleepily, falling back onto the couch and closing his eyes again.
“Who were you expectin’?” Starsky asked with a grin.
“You don’t wanna know,” Hutch replied grimly, rubbing his face a couple of times and pulling his hair back off his forehead.
“Wanna talk about it?” Starsky expertly aimed the remote over his shoulder and turned off the TV, settling himself on the floor next to the couch.
“Not much to talk about. Just…that thing that was on the bed upstairs…only this time, it got up…it was Sandra…damn it, Starsk, it was so real. But the dress was white, and she was…almost blue under it, the way somebody looks on the slab.”
“God, that was an ugly one.” Starsky rolled his eyes. “Anything happen, or was she just standing there?”
“She started walking toward me, and…there was blood…dripping…” Hutch’s voice broke but he fought to continue. “She was coming out of the room toward me, so when you shook me, I thought…”
“I’m sorry, babe.” Starsky sat on the edge of the couch and laid his hand on Hutch’s shoulder. “I promise you we’re gonna get this creep.”
“It won’t bring her back,” Hutch responded in a broken voice.
“No, you’re right about that, pal.” Starsky just sat there in silence, slowly massaging the spot on Hutch’s shoulder where his hand rested. Damn the psycho. He had to do this and start up those god-awful nightmares again.
“I miss her so much,” Hutch murmured.
“I know. I do too, partner. She used to stick up for me once in awhile.”
“A couple of junk food addicts, you two,” Hutch admonished with the trace of a smile in his voice.
“At least when she got to pick the restaurant they served something that wasn’t green, leafy and healthy.” Starsky felt a lump in his own throat. Sandra had been a third member of their inner circle, not just “Hutch’s girlfriend.” She had teased Hutch mercilessly about his health food interests, much to Starsky’s delight, and she had even purposely misconstrued the “me and thee” term, backing out of some of their bickering with the disclaimer “This is one of those ‘he and me’ things again.”
Like Terry, she loved them both, teased them both, and treated their friendship as a given, making Starsky feel welcome anytime he was included in one of their outings. She had even talked to him about Terry, and on Terry’s birthday, which Starsky had told Sandra was still a hard day for him, had given him a gift. She had paid to have a star named for Terry in the Star Registry, and even had a little map of the constellations so she could point it out to him. It seemed like he had forgotten to mourn the friend he’d lost in Sandra, feeling like his grief was far too insignificant when compared to Hutch’s.
“Starsk?” Hutch seemed surprised to see his partner in as bad a shape as he was. “What is it?”
“Sandy,” Starsky replied simply, using the nickname that only he was allowed to get away with. Sandra firmly insisted on being called by her full name to everyone else, but she always let Starsky call her Sandy. “She was a really good friend.”
“She was, wasn’t she?” Hutch smiled. “Makes me so angry sometimes, when I think about her and Terry. What life would have been like if…”
“Sandy would’ve liked Terry.”
“One big happy family,” Hutch answered, sadly.
“Do you ever feel like there’s just no chance to find anybody else like that?” Starsky asked, wishing he hadn’t turned this into making Hutch console him.
“Every day. You’ve seen a lot of women since Terry, even gotten kind of serious with a couple, but you haven’t found ‘the one’ again either.”
“I always thought that idea that there’s only one right person for you out there was a crock of shit—you know, with all the people in the world, statistically, it would seem like there oughtta be a whole bunch you could get along with.”
“I agree with that. But I also think the number of soulmates you run into is pretty limited.” Hutch shifted positions and Starsky moved to the other end of the couch so his partner could sit up and put his feet back on the floor.
“True.” Starsky nodded. “Wait here.” Starsky disappeared from the room and Hutch could hear him rifling through one of the boxes still stacked in the corner of the living room. He returned with a fat photo envelope. “I got these developed right after…well, I didn’t think you’d want to see them then, but since you had such an ugly vision of Sandy just now, maybe these’ll help.” He handed Hutch the envelope and sat next to him on the couch. Hutch opened the envelope and pulled out the stack of pictures. Some of them were just shots of the little house he and Sandra had bought, Starsky’s before and after pictures, but in many shots, Sandra was striking a pose. She always liked to ham it up for the camera, and Starsky, loving photography the way he did, adored her as a subject.
Hutch laughed out loud at a shot of her stretched out in a full length pose on the kitchen counter, with a small paintbrush clenched in her teeth as if it were a rose, dressed in her jeans and an old work shirt. Another shot showed her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor of the living room before the painting and carpeting was started, curling her lip and pointing downward at the horrible-looking brown carpeting that was eventually torn out and replaced.
“I didn’t know she was in so many of those shots.”
“Well, I showed up with the camera, and you know her,” Starsky replied, laughing a little. Then Hutch came across what Starsky considered the best treasure of his photo session: the picture Huggy had taken of all three of them, disheveled and grubby from a day of painting, Sandra sitting on the middle rungs of the ladder with “her two favorite guys,” as she called them, standing on either side of her.
“I think we’ve found the one we get framed.” Hutch smiled at Starsky, who grinned back.
“Consider it done.”
“We better call it a night. Early call in the morning.” Hutch stood up and started toward the door of the room.
“I fixed up the guest bedroom for ya. I couldn’t get your wall totally cleaned off, and I thought it might be a little…nicer. I put some of your stuff in there, too, so you oughtta be able to just use that room and not have to go in the other one. I’m gonna get some stuff at work tomorrow from one of the guys in housekeeping—they have a cleaner that’s supposed to work on…those kinds of stains.”
“Thanks, buddy. Goodnight.”
“‘night, Hutch.”
“You coming up?”
“Pretty soon, yeah.”
“Okay. See you in the morning.” Hutch left the room and Starsky could hear his footsteps on the stairs. He tucked the photos back in the envelope and made a mental note to drop off the negative for an enlargement.
CHAPTER 5
If ever the going got rough
You never were the kind
To think of backing down,
So when you got more than your share
In a minute,
I knew your heart was in it,
Knew that it would make you be your best
Put you to the test
But if sometimes it seems not worth the battle
That’s when you’ll see
You can count on me
Because I’m with you all the way…
Over the next several days, the detectives, along with a small task force hand-picked by Dobey, followed up numerous leads—essentially, legwork—in what was beginning to seem like a vain hunt for “The Bridegroom.” Three days after the mannequin was left in Hutch’s room, Ian Gardner went to the press, angry at the lack of action by the police department. The killer was quickly named “The Bridegroom,” and every newspaper and tabloid in the country jumped on the bandwagon with the predictable cheesy headlines: “Death Did Them Part,” “Until Death Do Us Part,” “Roses for the Bride,” and “Marriage Can Be Murder” were only a few.
The reporters somehow scouted out photos of the victims from family or friends, photos of Hutch, photos of Starsky and Hutch together, along with the exposé of how one victim’s fiancé was being allowed to spearhead the investigation and question of how appropriate that was. Dobey spent most of his time barking “no comment” into his phone or dancing while the commissioner and the DA shot at his feet.
The receipt found in Coral Rutherford’s bedroom wasn’t a terribly solid lead. Officers questioned the management, interrogated every employee, but only a couple of customers who had bought new basketballs from Al’s Sporting Goods had made any impression the clerks. One of those customers was an eighty-year-old woman who bought the ball for her grandson, and the other was a young man, whose good looks had attracted the attention of the co-ed who had been working the register at the time. Even so, no one remembered anything outstanding or distinguishing about anyone who bought a basketball on August 17th, the date on the receipt.
Two area stores reported stolen mannequins, and one warehouse manager where a couple of major stores stored their spares admitted he wouldn’t be sure if one was missing or not. One mannequin was located, dressed in tassels and lace underwear in a fraternity house on a nearby campus, and the other was unaccounted for, though the manager said he thought it was a brunette anyway.
The roses were the best lead. An expert said they appeared to be fresh from a garden, which would have to be fairly extensive and well-kept to produce that number of perfect specimens all at once. There were no signs of disease or insect infestation on any of the flowers, which the expert informed them was commendable and probably the result of tireless fertilizing, spraying and ideal conditions. The quest for area rose enthusiasts commenced.
There were only a few wedding-related links between the three women. All three had tried on dresses at two specific boutiques and sampled the foods of one particular caterer, who turned out to be an elderly woman who did all her own cooking out of her kitchen and didn’t own a single rose bush. All employees of the two shops were re-interrogated and investigated, but to no avail. No rose experts were uncovered, nor did these people seem likely suspects as serial killers. The vast majority were women, and most of them were settled family people without police records—not that that was any iron-clad guarantee they weren’t guilty, but it was a pretty good indicator.
Starsky had a brainstorm that made him the favorite dartboard target of the lower-ranking members of the task force, but since all admitted it had merit, it was put into motion. Scanning all area newspapers for the last year, wedding and engagement announcements were all checked, one-by-one, to uncover any that had ended badly—the wedding canceled, a tragic death or suicide by the bride—anything that would leave a devastated or angry potential groom behind. Then they would find out if there were any rose experts in that crowd—or at least anyone who had close ties or access to someone with an extensive garden.
The investigation and press hassles occupied long hours each day, and by the time the two winded detectives made it home, there was barely time to do anything else but heat up TV dinners, take showers and fall into bed. It was on such an evening that Starsky found an unwelcome greeting in the mailbox. In a plain white business envelope with his name neatly typed on the front was a single sheet of typing paper with a gruesome black and white Holocaust-era photo paper clipped to it. The typed message read: “Hitler had the right idea. Watch your back, Jew-boy.”
“Shit.” Starsky stuffed it back in its envelope, mindless of prints, his hands shaking slightly. Hutch looked up from his seat at the table where he was finishing off his dinner. Starsky had gone out to pick up the mail, which they had both forgotten at the curb on the way in, while his partner finished eating.
“Bad news?”
“Yeah, you could say that.” It was obvious by the position of his hands that Starsky was about to tear it in half, but Hutch stood quickly and took the envelope from him.
“You mind?” he asked before opening it.
“Be my guest.” Starsky dropped into one of the chairs at the table. Hutch opened the envelope and scanned the contents.
“Damn it. If he thinks for one goddamn minute he’s getting away with this—” Hutch was headed for the door when Starsky stood and grabbed his arm.
“We’ve got no proof.”
“I’ve got all the proof I need and you can let go of me.” Hutch jerked his arm away. “I’ve had enough of this diplomatic bullshit. This is taking it too far. You are not going to take this from anybody, least of all that sorry piece of shit that’s passing for a human being with the Nazi flag in his window!” Hutch raced down the three steps to the entry way and out the back door, making quick progress toward the car. The wall that ran between the yards made the trip on foot impractical, and unbearable when you were irate and just wanted to get your hands around your neighbor’s throat as soon as possible.
“Hutch!” Starsky missed catching his partner, and he didn’t wait for Starsky to catch up to get in the car. He tore out of the driveway practically on two wheels, and took off, tires screeching to pay Mr. Schoemacher a visit.
Starsky jumped in the Torino and pulled out right behind Hutch, figuring someone had to be there to temper what could be a disastrous scene.
The grey Mercury raced up to the curb in front of Schoemacher’s white house, and Hutch was already out of the car and halfway up to the porch before Starsky could bring the Torino to a stop and run after him.
“Schoemacher!!” Hutch pounded on the front door with the side of his fist.
“Hutch, come on—”
“You stay out of this!” he shouted at Starsky, pointing a long finger directly at him.
“This is about me, damn it!”
“Just back off. I’ve had all I’m gonna take from this asshole.”
“May I help you?” A young woman with sandy blonde hair, wearing a bathrobe, yanked open the door, glaring angrily at the two men.
“I wanna see Schoemacher, NOW.” Hutch flashed his police ID.
“He’s not here,” she responded, deadpan.
“I suppose you wouldn’t object if I came in and saw for myself?”
“Yeah, I would, unless you’ve got a warrant. If you don’t, get your ass off my porch.”
“Look, lady, your boyfriend, husband, whatever—just bought himself a whole lotta grief. You pass that message on to him. And tell him to watch his own back.” Hutch turned and stormed down the front steps, and Starsky followed. They heard the door slam behind them.
“What were you plannin’ on doing if he was home?” Starsky asked as they approached Hutch’s car.
“I don’t know exactly,” he admitted. “I saw this…filth and I lost it.” Hutch gestured with the envelope that was clutched in his hand.
“You know that between the two of us we just destroyed any hope of lifting prints off that thing.”
“Sure, as if the sick SOB wouldn’t wear gloves. I’m sure they teach them that in Nazi training.”
“Look, let’s go home and get some rest. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”
“Starsky, you’re so damn calm about this.”
“No I’m not.” Starsky took a deep breath. “Remember I told you that the adjustment to high school out here wasn’t real smooth? Well, my Uncle Al had a theory about jerks who make fun of and hassle other people. You give ’em what they want when you let ’em rile ya up. If you can turn the joke back on them, or just ignore ’em, it drives ’em nuts because it takes away their power. Back home, I had a bunch of friends, and we backed each other up when there was a fight. When I got here, I was all alone. No back up. The best defense—offense, really—for me was to just ignore it or crack a joke. It made the other person look dumber than if I went nuts and tried to take ’em on.”
Starsky glanced back at the house in front of them. “This jerk is no different. He wants a fight. He wants to do something so he can get one of us suspended or tossed off the force for beating him up—preferably me, since I’m the Jew, but you’ll do nicely too. He’s goading us.”
“He’s good at it.”
“Yeah, he is. But we’re too smart for that. This kind of stuff gives me chills, and I’m not gonna lie to ya and say it doesn’t make me feel bad or depressed or insulted, but it ain’t worth givin’ him what he wants.”
“I’ve gotta say I’m surprised at how you’re taking this.” Hutch opened the driver’s door of the Mercury and sat in the seat.
“Let’s say I’ve learned to pick my fights a little more wisely. This one ain’t worth the hassle. ‘Course if I get anything else in the mail, I’ll know enough not to handle it like a first year rookie. If he makes another move we can trace, I’ll sue the fucker for harassment. We could use the extra money to rebuild the garage.” Starsky walked back to the Torino and slid behind the wheel. This time, Hutch followed him.
* * * *
Over the next few days, both detectives had their fill of roses. Upon obtaining a list of experts and enthusiasts from two local rose growers’ clubs, they spent most days wandering through gardens, assessing how many American Beauty rose bushes were in full bloom, as these were the killer’s rose of choice. Most of the gardeners were more than happy to show off their handiwork, even if it was in connection with a murder investigation. None reported any of the blooms being stolen, though at least three elderly women somewhat reluctantly offered lists of friends and family who either requested, received as gifts or cut roses from the gardens.
The wedding announcements from the last year’s newspaper clippings unearthed six disgruntled potential grooms: four break-ups and two accidental deaths. None of these people tied in to the rose aspect of the case, and none seemed likely suspects, though all were interviewed and added to the growing collection of three-ring notebooks on a shelf in a special office set up for “The Bridegroom” task force. Everyone was clocking in tons of overtime, but nothing was fitting together.
The friends and relatives of the rose growers were questioned mostly by the junior members of the task force, who were first-year detectives getting plenty of legwork experience under the tuteledge of the senior members of the team. Starsky, Hutch, Jim Nedloe, and Jack Elliot were the primary investigators coordinating the effort, but a newly partnered pair, Grant Shemanski and Christine Walling, were the fortunate recipients of all the detail work in support of their more experienced co-workers’ brainstorms.
Nedloe and Elliot reviewed the interview results with the younger team, finding four people they felt were worth seriously investigating. One was a middle-aged man with a long history of mental and emotional problems, including some violent episodes involving his ex-girlfriend. Another was a young man Shemanski and Walling described as “surly and uneasy” with the encounter. The other two were men with criminal records involving assault and robbery respectively. Both had cut the roses themselves from their grandmothers’ gardens for their girlfriends.
Hutch was surprised to find a message from Cecile Valentine among the many others waiting on his desk one sunny September morning. Out of curiosity more than interest in Cecile, he dialed the number.
“Cecile Valentine,” the voice answered crisply.
“Cecile, this is Ken Hutchinson. I have a message here from you.”
“Good morning, Ken. The reason I called was that a friend of mine is opening an exhibit of her paintings Saturday night at a small gallery downtown—the Barrington Gallery—and I wondered if you’d like to come to the opening with me? You mentioned once that you did a little painting yourself, so I thought this might be of interest.”
“Well, that’s a really nice offer, Cecile, but—” He looked up at Starsky, who was giving him an exasperated expression, as if the impending refusal of the invitation was unthinkable. And Starsky was probably right. Going out for an evening on the town would most likely be good for him. Like most things that are good for a person, that didn’t make it any more appealing. Nonetheless… “I hope you don’t mind that my schedule is a little unpredictable right now. I think I have Saturday night off, and I’d like to go, but I can always get a call—”
“I’ll have a lot of friends there, so even if you have to leave unexpectedly, I’ll be able to get a ride home. How about it?”
“Sounds great. What time should I pick you up—we can have dinner first.” He noted Starsky’s approving grin and rolled his eyes. After writing down Cecile’s address, he hung up and sneered across the desk at his partner. “Happy?”
“Ecstatic.” Starsky grinned back at him. “She really likes you.”
“Yeah? That’s real nice for her, but I’m not really ready to get into anything serious with anybody else. I just don’t feel it.”
“Hutch, you don’t have to marry her. You’re just getting together with her. Believe me, I’m the last person who would think you’d be ready to run out and find a replacement. It doesn’t work that way. But it’ll do ya good to get out and have a little fun. What’re you gonna do?”
“Art gallery opening.”
“Ah,” Starsky nodded, approving of it for Hutch but infinitely relieved it would be his partner, and not him, standing around staring at abstract paintings for the evening.
“So how about you, Romeo? What big plans have you made for Saturday night?”
“I got a date with a pile of cartons in the living room and your bedroom wall.”
“My what?”
“I’m going to repaint that wall. Aren’t ya sick of the guest room yet?”
“Well, yeah, but I can—”
“I said I’d do it. I just haven’t had time yet. Now that we’re finally getting—supposedly—a weekend off, I’ve got a list of stuff to do that won’t quit.”
“So do I, but you’re still pushing me out the door with Cecile.”
“Yeah, but you need a lift. You’ll have fun. Cecile seems pretty nice—and she’s not too hard to look at, either. Did you see those legs?” Starsky whispered confidentially across the desk.
“No, I hadn’t noticed she had any,” Hutch snapped back sarcastically. “I’ve been depressed, Starsk—not dead,” he retorted, smiling slightly.
“‘Sides, I got a date Sunday afternoon with Lola.”
“Lola?” That name was a new one.
“Remember the curvy Spanish girl with the big, uh, rose garden we talked to?”
“You didn’t actually agree to go back there and tour her greenhouse.”
“I’d tour her greenhouse any day of the week.”
“We do have to be back to work Monday.”
“If I don’t show up, you’ll know she offered to keep me. Did you see that estate? Man, her old man musta been loaded.”
“She probably killed him and buried him under the rose beds. I’m tellin’ ya, she’s a viper, Starsk.”
“Long, lean and slippery. Couldn’t agree with ya more,” Starsky replied, winking as he strutted to the nearest file cabinet to replace the folders he was carrying.
* * * *
Hutch was a little surprised at himself when he found it hard to figure out what to wear to take Cecile out for the evening. He felt so out of practice at dressing up for anything that his sport coats seemed like foreign garments. He had worn one old battle-scarred one to a couple of court appearances in the interim, but he hadn’t been “dressing to impress” for quite a while. Over five months, he thought, as he straightened his tie, then took it and the shirt back off, opting for a turtleneck instead. Next he tossed that back on the bed and dug through the closet for another shirt. Finally, he settled on a cream-colored dress shirt, open at the neck, a camel-colored sport coat and light brown pants. The knock at the door startled him, and soon was followed by a dark head popping in a small space as the door opened.
“You’re gonna be late, blondie. If you spend any more time in front of that mirror, you’re gonna put down roots.”
“This was your idea, so don’t make any smart ass remarks.”
“This was Cecile’s idea. You look fine—now quit messing with your hair and get movin’.”
“Do you think I oughtta shave off the mustache? Sandra always said—”
“Not before you pick Cecile up, you shouldn’t. Now come on. You’re stalling.”
“Yeah, I know.” Hutch turned away from the mirror, which he really hadn’t been looking at anyway. “It feels…wrong.”
“Going out with somebody? There’s nothing wrong with just goin’ out for the evening.” Starsky sat on the foot of the bed. “Look, the first time I went out with somebody after Terry, I felt like I was cheating on her. But then I remembered her telling me that day at the amusement park that I couldn’t stop living because she did. Kinda said it all.”
“Well, I guess I am running late. I should be home early.”
“Okay, Ma. I got your number by the phone an’ everything.”
“Oh shut up.” Hutch laughed as he started downstairs with Starsky close on his heels.
“Have fun, okay?” Starsky followed him to the side door off the kitchen. The builder was due the following week to put on the new front porch, but for now, they were doomed to use the side door with its temperamental lock. “I’ll leave this unlocked for ya.”
“Probably better lock it—at least before you turn in.”
“Will you quit obsessing about this and just leave, already?” Starsky prodded. He watched his partner head for the car.
“Starsk?” Hutch almost said something more about the lock, not understanding why he was so uneasy on this point. After all, Starsky was a cop, not a little kid on his first night alone. He stifled the impulse.
“What?” Starsky waited through the long pause.
“Nothin’. See ya later.” Hutch got in the car and began backing out of the driveway. Starsky was a little puzzled by the aborted statement, but he shrugged it off and headed back to work on painting Hutch’s wall.
* * * *
Cecile was good company. Hutch hadn’t anticipated enjoying himself, but he found the attractive brunette to be as smart as she was pretty. They dined on salad and whitefish at a trendy little restaurant a few blocks from the gallery, and sipped white wine while they discussed art in general. Dressed in a tailored red dress and heels, she looked sophisticated, yet pretty.
“Any progress on the big case?” she finally asked, as he dreaded she would. The killer had thus far not come to dinner with him, but now he was there.
“We’ve been following up a ton of leads, and one of them is bound to pan out. It’s unfortunately a long process with a lot of unglamourous legwork.”
“I didn’t mean to put you on a spot. I imagine it’s all confidential.”
“A lot of it is.”
“Ken, I get the feeling you’re a little uneasy with this.”
“With what?” He knew he was guilty as hell and had just been busted, but he tried to deny it a little while longer.
“This evening.” She was quiet a moment. “I read about what happened to your fiance, and I want you do know that I’m not interested in pushing you into anything. When I meet someone I like, I want to get to know that person. I was hoping I wouldn’t put you off by calling you. Quite frankly if I had waited for you to call me, I’d have been too old to go out after dark.” Something in the remark struck Hutch funny, and he laughed. Again, he was guilty as charged, and he was glad Starsky had pushed him into going out with Cecile. They visited awhile longer and then started out for the gallery.
* * * *
Starsky backed away from the wall, happy to see the paint had covered the ghost of the message easily. Of course, it was possible it would show through after it dried, but not likely. He checked his watch. Nine-thirty. Hutch should be hob-nobbing with the artsy set by now, he thought, smiling to himself as he cleaned up the paint supplies and started toward the stairs. He was surprised to hear the side door open and the sound of footsteps on the first floor.
“Hutch? Hey, what’re you doin’ home so early?” he called downstairs as he descended the back staircase carefully carrying the roller tray he planned to dump in the laundry room sink. There was no response to his question. “Hutch?” He set the tray in the big double sink, dried his hands on an old towel hung there and went out to the kitchen to find his partner.
* * * *
Hutch dropped Cecile off at her apartment near midnight. He’d had a good time, and he made plans with her to get together for lunch one day during the week. He wasn’t ready to pursue anything too hot and heavy, and she seemed to realize that and was not offended by his refusal of her offer of a nightcap. He found himself humming along with the radio on the way home.
The house was completely dark when he pulled into the driveway. That was a little peculiar because normally, if not on a date, Starsky would be glued to a late night creature feature on a Saturday night. Hutch figured his partner had gotten tired and turned in for an early night’s sleep. He was a little disturbed to find the side door still unlocked, but assumed Starsky probably forgot it or decided to leave it that way.
Hutch flipped on the kitchen light and froze at what he saw. The table was turned on its side, the chairs tossed aside—one of them broken, and several dishes that had been sitting on the counter top were scattered, broken, on the floor.
Drawing his gun, Hutch made his way stealthily to the doorway between the dining room and kitchen. He slowly pushed the swinging door open and saw nothing but darkness until the yellow kitchen light cast a glow into another ransacked room. Not only was the large dining room table overturned, but it looked as if it had been chopped with an axe, with two of its legs broken off, and several horrible marks on the surface. The french doors leading to the living room had been devastated: the frames hacked ruthlessly, and all the beveled glass broken out and scattered on the floor.
He resisted the urge to call out to Starsky. He knew he should call for back up and not go further alone, but all he could picture was what condition his partner must be in, somewhere in the ruined house. The extent of the damage was only a sideline technical fact in his mind. Starsky was his greatest worry now, and even in the vandalized living room, there was no sign of him. The walls, however, told a story. Swastikas were spray painted in black in four different places, every picture that had been on the mantel had been broken out of its frame and either torn or defaced, the most vicious emphasis on the photos of Starsky’s family.
The living room French doors were also destroyed. What ultimately stopped Hutch in his tracks to briefly marvel at the hideousness of the damage was the massacred staircase. Only the steps were intact. The banister, obviously pummeled with an axe, just vaguely resembled its former self. But the banister in the open portion of the upstairs hall was all in one piece, and what he saw there froze him momentarily. He could see Starsky’s hands, crossed one in front of the other, somehow attached to the railing as he slumped against it in the upstairs hall.
“Starsky!” Hutch raced up the stairs and dropped to his knees next to his partner. “Starsk? It’s me.” He checked the pulse, which was strong, though rapid. His face was badly bruised, his shirt rumpled, torn and hanging haphazardly on his battered body. His wrists were bound together, and then tethered to the banister using his belt, his arms stretched tautly above his head. Given his probable injuries, he may have passed out from the pain if not a blow.
Hutch fumbled with the twisted leather and belt buckle, finally liberating the other’s arms. There was a little whimper and movement of swollen facial features as he lowered them.
“It’s okay, babe. It’s just me. It’s Hutch, buddy. I’m right here.” He worked furiously at freeing the bound wrists, and carefully slid his semi-conscious partner to lie on his back on the floor, tucking his jacket under Starsky’s blood-matted curls. He took advantage of his partner’s dazed state long enough to leave him to call for an ambulance. He rushed into Starsky’s room and yanked a blanket off the bed and returned to where Starsky lay on the floor. A quick assessment told him there were cracked or possibly broken ribs on one side, some type of head injury which had produced a fair amount of blood and judging by the raw, bloody marks on his wrists, he had been restrained a long while. He carefully covered his friend.
“Starsk, it’s me. Come on, babe, can ya hear me?” He took Starsky’s hand and leaned in close to his face. “I’m right here. It’s all over. I’m right here, buddy. You’re safe now.”
“Hutch?” The voice was weak and strained, and Starsky barely opened his eyes to slits.
“Right here, babe. Right here.” He stroked back through the other’s hair. “Shhh. Don’t try to talk,” he responded to the constricted expression on Starsky’s face. Hutch pulled out his handkerchief and blotted up a little of the blood that was still oozing from Starsky’s nose and the corner of his mouth. He was relieved to see the blood around his partner’s mouth appeared to be coming from a split in his lip and not from deeper inside.
“Hurts,” Starsky whispered, a single tear rolling slowly from the corner of one swollen eye.
“I know, pal.” Hutch caught the tear with a clean spot on the handkerchief. “Your side mostly?”
“Uh-huh…’n’ m’hair,” he mumbled.
“Your hair? You mean your head, pal?”
“Pulled…m’hair…Hutch?”
“What, buddy?”
“Don’t let him…” He reached weakly up at his partner with the hand Hutch wasn’t already holding. “Help me…”
“Ambulance is on the way. I’ll be right here with you, babe. Just hang in there.” He captured the questing hand with his free one, and noticed it was bruised and swollen. He held it much more gently than the other. “Who did this, Starsk?”
“Four or five of ’em…big…bigger’n you…taller…” Starsky winced again.
“Okay. Just relax. You don’t have to talk anymore.”
“Ski masks…I can’t…ID ’em.”
“Doesn’t matter, pal. Just relax.” Hutch was pleased to hear the bellow of Dobey’s voice downstairs, directing the ambulance attendants up the mangled staircase to the second floor. The captain had made good time meeting the ambulance there, as he only lived about five minutes from his two detectives’ new home—two or three minutes with lights and siren.
Hutch tried to stay in Starsky’s line of vision while the paramedics checked him out and prepared him to be moved to the gurney.
“What the hell happened here?” Dobey asked, looking a bit frazzled. Dressed in an old suit of sweats, he had obviously not lost any time getting himself together and beating the ambulance to the scene.
“I came home and found him tied to the banister up here. The house was trashed…he says four or five guys in ski masks did it—all larger than I am. That’s the most he can tell us right now.”
“How bad is he?” Dobey asked quietly.
“He’s been worked over pretty well, but I didn’t see any bullet or knife wounds. He’s got a good sized lump on the back of his head, and some bleeding from it. I know who did this. And I’m gonna go settle it right now!” Hutch started down the hall but Dobey grabbed his arm and yanked him back.
“If you’ve got a lead, Hutchinson, you give it to me and I’ll follow it up.” He assessed the fire in Hutch’s eyes, the readiness to defy any authority that stood between him and the person he believed had hurt Starsky. “If this is what I think it is—a hate crime—your partner’s going to need you. Trust me—I’ll follow up on this situation most assertively. Now who do you suspect?”
“This one’s mine, Captain,” Hutch said in low, but firm, voice.
“That partner is yours, and it’s a pretty safe bet he’s been through hell here tonight. You take care of him and let me take care of business. If you go off like some kind of half-assed vigilante, you’re just going to ruin our chances at a good bust. Now who do you think did this?”
“Schoemacher and his goons. The nut that lives in the white house right behind us. He’s got a Nazi flag in his back window, he insulted Starsky to his face and sent him a threatening note with a picture of a concentration camp mass grave several days ago.”
“And this is the first I’m hearing about it?”
“We both handled the note and the envelope, as well as the picture. There were no decent prints to be had there. We went over there, and his wife claimed he wasn’t home and refused to let us in. I guess it was his wife… At any rate, we haven’t heard any more about it. Until tonight.”
“The white house out back?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’ll take a black and white over there and check it out. Now you stick with Starsky. I think you know I’ll do everything I can on this one.”
“I know. Thanks. Thanks for getting here so fast tonight.” Dobey just waved a hand of acknowledgment toward him as he hurried down the back stairs to find officers to accompany him on his visit to the neighbors.
* * * *
Starsky seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness in the ambulance, and that made Hutch reluctant to cooperate with waiting outside the emergency room. The only thing Starsky did when he came around was ask for Hutch and reach for him. Up to that moment, Hutch had been there every time.
He paced the hall like a caged animal, trying to drink a cup of coffee kindly offered by a nurse. He was relieved to see Nedloe and Elliot hurrying through the entrance.
“We just heard on the radio about Starsky,” Jim spoke up immediately. “How’s he doin’?”
“Don’t know yet. They’re still checking him out.”
“One of the guys down at the precinct said he heard something about Nazis,” Jack added.
“They really trashed the house, spray painted swastikas all around. We’ve got a nut living behind us who has a flag in his window.”
“Isn’t it a little stupid then for him to attack Starsky? I mean, why not just invite the cops over to watch?” Jim sat on the end of a couch, and finally Hutch stopped pacing and occupied the other end of it. Jack took a nearby chair, slumping in it slightly.
“I know, but I don’t know as this guy is long on brains. He’s sure got enough hate to go around, though.” Hutch shook his head.
“How bad’s the damage?” Jack asked.
“I couldn’t give a damn less about the house.” Hutch stood up and started pacing again. “What the hell are they doing in there?” he erupted. Just then, a doctor in turquoise scrubs approached him.
“You must be Hutch,” he said with a smile.
“Is he asking for me?”
“Well, it’s about the only word we’ve heard for the last several minutes. I think I heard it in response to ‘does this hurt,’ ‘how did this happen,’ and ‘take a deep breath.’” The doctor’s young, bearded face was wreathed in a reassuring smile. He adjusted his wire-framed glassed on the bridge of his nose. “I’m not making light of this—is it Mr. Hutch?”
“Hutch is fine.”
“Like I was saying, Hutch, I’m not trying to minimize that your friend’s been through a lot of pain and apparently a very traumatic experience. But there doesn’t appear to be any serious internal damage. His kidneys are bruised—he’s taken some heavy blows. He’s got four cracked ribs on the left side, a concussion, and more bruises than you’d want to count, but all in all, I feel he’ll make a full recovery barring any unforeseen complications.”
“Which could include?”
“Well, in an extreme situation, his kidneys could malfunction if the trauma was severe enough, but I don’t anticipate that in this case. He is coherent though not terribly cooperative. I’m going to move him to a private room for tonight, because I think he needs some peace and quiet. I want him observed closely on the outside chance of any kidney problems or complications from the concussion. Incidentally, when he talks about his hair hurting? There’s an area where a clump of hair was pulled out forcibly. My guess would be that whoever did this pulled him in a direction he didn’t want to go, and his hair went with them but he didn’t. It’ll grow back, but it probably hurts like hell right now.”
“When can I see him?”
“As soon as we get him settled in his room. I—”
“I want to stay with him. He’s been through something—”
“That’s no problem. That’s one of the reasons I ordered a private room, because I had a feeling he probably shouldn’t be left alone given what he’s been through. The only way we settled him down at all was promising him he’d get to see you as soon as we were done. The nurse will come and get you in about ten minutes or so. He’ll be on the sixth floor.”
“Thanks, Doctor…”
“Stevenson. Rob Stevenson.” He extended a hand and Hutch shook it. “I’ll be on duty tonight, so I’ll be checking on him from time to time. We’re going to go ahead and let him sleep a little if he wants, but we still need to wake him periodically because of the head injury.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Hutch watched him retreat down the hall and back through a set of double doors.
“Sounds pretty hopeful.” Jim joined Hutch where he stood.
“I’m more worried about the whole experience than I am the injuries. Those heal.”
“Hutch, I’ve been fortunate enough not to be a victim of a crime like that, but I have a couple of friends who have had racially-motivated incidents in their lives. It makes you feel real bad, but when you once see that you’re not the one who’s deficient or has a real problem, it gets better.”
“Thanks for coming by,” Hutch said as he walked back with Jim closer to where Jack was sprawled, half-dozing, in the chair.
“We were just coming off a double shift. I’m going to drive the zombie over here home,” Jim pointed a thumb toward his yawning partner.
“I’m gettin’ too damned old for this schedule,” Jack grumbled as he pulled himself to his feet. “Hey, tell Starsky to hang in there. We’ll stop by and give him a hard time tomorrow.”
“Just like any other day,” Jim chimed in.
“I’ll tell him. Thanks again.” Hutch watched them walk out, grateful for the tension-breaker when he needed it most. He only had a few more minutes to wait before the nurse appeared and escorted him to Starsky’s room.
The two or three minutes seemed to expand, and Hutch found himself increasingly uneasy at waiting for the nurse. Besides, it was rare for either of them to observe strict hospital etiquette when waiting to see the other after being brought in with an injury. Hutch proceeded up to the sixth floor himself, trying his best to discreetly peek into the little square windows in the doors until he approached one he didn’t have to investigate through the window. He heard Starsky’s voice very distinctly.
“…to leave me alone and let Hutch do it.”
“Hutch isn’t a nurse, Mr. Starsky,” a female voice replied, sounding strained to its limits of courtesy. The word “Hutch” had received an extraordinarily sarcastic emphasis. “Please lie back. I know you’re uncomfortable, but we can’t put you on your left side, now can we?”
“Hey, buddy, how’re you doin’?” Hutch made his entrance, exasperating the nurse further and spreading a look of peace over his partner’s bruised features.
“I’m trying to get him settled into bed. Maybe you can talk some sense into him,” the nurse replied sternly.
“I can take care of doing that.” Hutch approached the bed where Starsky sat, but received a glare from the nurse. Hutch felt Starsky’s hand slip into the hand that was hanging at his side, as if he wanted to physically restrain Hutch from leaving him. Hutch said nothing, but held the hand firmly against his side, to reassure his partner that he had no intention of going anywhere.
“Mr. Hutch—”
“Hutchinson,” Hutch corrected tersely, sufficiently unhappy with the nurse’s abrupt demeanor around his partner. Starsky could be exasperating to hospital personnel, but anyone with two eyes could see he’d been through enough that night without getting the stern treatment from the nurses.
“Mr. Hutchinson, I’m sure you are aware that your friend here has a number of injuries and shouldn’t be irresponsibly jostled around—”
“Look, Ms…Halleran,” he read off her tag, “I spent many hours taking care of my partner while he recovered from extensive surgical repair of the damage caused by multiple slugs from an automatic. I didn’t ‘irresponsibly jostle’ him then and I have no plans to start now. If they trusted me in the ICU of this same hospital to turn him when he needed it, I think you can probably trust me on this one. Furthermore, if he wants me to do it for him, I’m going to be the one who does it.”
“Fine.” She turned and marched toward the door and finally, blessedly, was out of the room.
“Already making friends with the natives, eh, buddy?” Hutch teased gently as he released Starsky’s hand and began fluffing the pillows on the bed where Starsky remained sitting tentatively on the edge. It was a relief to see his partner upright and fully conscious. “Where does it hurt, huh?” Hutch’s soft, solicitous question was almost more than Starsky could answer past the lump in his throat. Enduring over two hours with the gang that broke into the house, all he’d wanted to hear was Hutch coming home for real. Now here he was. The relief was overwhelming. “Starsk?” Hutch sat next to him on the bed. “Hurts just about everywhere, doesn’t it?” He caught a tear that was escaping his friend’s eye with the light brush of a thumb.
“She wanted me on my back,” he responded. “It hurts, Hutch. I don’t wanna be on my back.”
“The doctor said you had a couple nasty blows to the kidneys. He doesn’t think they’ll be any serious problem…just sore.”
“Not just that…it’s all over,” he said quietly.
“All over?” Hutch leaned back and untied the neck of the hospital gown. He found Starsky’s back to be a mass of bruises. “And she wanted you on your back…my God.” He fought tears that were welling in his eyes and retied the gown. Standing up, he patted Starsky’s shoulder gently. “Wait right here. We need more pillows.”
Hutch scanned the quiet hall for some sign of a friendly nurse. He was beginning to think that was a contradiction in terms, given their recent experience. So many wonderful nurses during Starsky’s recovery from the Gunther ordeal, all very sensitive and solicitous…how could they draw this one jerk on tonight of all nights?
“Can I help you?” Hutch spun around, surprised to see a pleasant smile, attached to a candy-striper.
“I need pillows—my friend does. I’m trying to get him settled, and…he’s pretty bruised up so I can’t just put him flat on his back.”
“He’s in 619?” she asked, gesturing toward the room behind Hutch.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right back.” He watched as she hurried down the hall. She was probably near 30 years old, a bit older than the average candy-striper, with medium-length sandy hair. A very average-looking woman who seemed like an angel at the moment. He ducked back in the room to find Starsky still sitting dutifully where he’d been left.
“A candy striper is getting us some extra pillows.”
“My right side hurts, too.”
“I’m hoping if we get enough pillows under you we can put you sort of on your right side, maybe leaning back a little. Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out, buddy.”
“Pillow delivery,” the candy striper announced cheerfully as she came into the room wheeling a laundry cart full of fluffy white pillows. Hutch liked the way her mind worked. “I figured I’d just bring a whole pile of ’em so we could use as many as we need. Would you like some help?”
Hutch glanced at Starsky, and his partner nodded, realizing Hutch seemed hopeful for an affirmative answer.
Between the candy striper, whose name turned out to be Wendy, and Hutch, they loaded the bed with pillows and managed to get Starsky propped in a position, much like Hutch had described to him, which defied even Starsky to complain. He was surrounded by softness on all sides, but his weight still supported so it didn’t pull on the injured ribs. There was even an especially fat pillow for his left arm to rest on so it didn’t press on his side. Wendy put up the left side rail to keep it all securely in place, and smiled at the relaxed look on the patient’s face.
“You look pretty comfortable there, David,” she said, smiling as she smoothed the blanket one last time before stepping back from the bed. “Mind if I come visit you tomorrow night and see how you’re doing?”
“I’d like that,” he said, smiling back at her.
“It’s a date then. You get some rest now.” She started out of the room past Hutch.
“Thanks for all your help,” Hutch called after her.
“Don’t mention it.” She smiled warmly back at him and exited with her laundry cart bearing only one of the several pillows she’d shown up with. Hutch hoped no one else on that floor needed an extra anytime soon…
“Feel better?” Hutch took a seat on the right edge of the bed. Starsky slid his arm around his partner’s forearm so that his badly bruised right hand rested on Hutch’s elbow.
“Yeah, lots.” Starsky tried a grin, but the swelling around his mouth prevented it from resembling much more than a grimace.
“What happened to this guy, huh?” Hutch reached around to gently cover the hand on his arm. Starsky seemed to pause before answering, then forged ahead.
“One of ’em stepped on it when I reached for Terry’s picture. I…I didn’t want to watch them…tear it up. I was on the floor in the living room, and they were just taking their time destroying…all our pictures.”
“How long were they there, babe?” Hutch asked softly.
“Couple of hours. I heard ’em come in downstairs about 9:30, I think, ’cause I remember thinkin’ it was awful early for you to be getting home.”
“You want to talk about it?” Hutch asked, rubbing lightly the spot on Starsky’s arm where his hand rested.
“I’m sorry about the house, Hutch,” he said in a choked whisper.
“Hey, you’ve got nothing to be sorry about, buddy.”
“Did you see what they did?” Starsky shook his head. “We can’t ever fix it.”
“Of course we can fix it.” Hutch brushed a tear off Starsky’s cheek. “You don’t have to worry about that now.”
“But they just…destroyed the whole thing. The staircase and the French doors and all the stuff that made it so…special.” He shook his head slightly. “You were right all along…we shoulda never bought it.”
“No, I wasn’t right all along. Starsk, that house is feeling like home…for a lot of reasons, none of which involved the woodwork. You know that feeling of ‘home’ I was talking about before?” Starsky nodded, swallowing back tears that seemed insistent on escaping. “Well, I still feel it. Right here in this stupid hospital room. It’s that feeling that comes from being with your family, and you don’t need a particular building to feel that.” He smiled down at his partner, who still looked as miserable as before. “There’s only one thing in that house I can’t replace, and that’s you, pal.” He watched the bobbing Adam’s apple for a moment.
“I just wanted to hear you come home…so they’d…stop,” he murmured. “I didn’t want you to get hurt…but I just wanted them to leave me alone.”
“I know, pal. I wish I’d gotten there sooner. Everything’s gonna be okay, I promise. We’ll fix everything up the way it was…or we’ll find another fixer-upper we like better, huh?” Hutch was relieved to see a little ray of happiness in his partner’s face.
“You’d buy another house with me?” Starsky asked, sounding surprised, as if he’d only narrowly convinced Hutch to do it the first time.
“Why shouldn’t I? You a bad credit risk or something?” Hutch smiled. “Get some rest, buddy. I’ll be right here. The doctor’s going to come check up on that thick skull of yours, so don’t be surprised if you get disturbed in a little while.”
“They’re gonna want a statement.”
“Not tonight, partner. Not til you’re rested up and feel ready.”
“It was pretty awful, Hutch…the things they said…things about my mother…stuff you just can’t let pass, ya know? I mean, I knew I was outnumbered no matter what I did, but I couldn’t just listen to it and not…not do something. But what happened to the house is my fault. If I’d’a done what he told me to do…well, I think they were afraid of killin’ me or something because finally they stopped beating me and started on the house…which was better than what they did after that…they pushed me down on the floor and then they were on either side, just…kicking me hard as they could…everywhere.” Starsky shuddered visibly. “I think that’s when the ribs went.”
“What did he tell you to do that you wouldn’t?” Hutch asked gently, watching Starsky’s eyes drop so only the motion of the lashes blinking let him know they were still open.
“Lick his boots.” Starsky looked up at him with an expression that was pure Starsky arrogance and defiance. “I told him to go fuck himself.” He seemed a little fueled by that declaration, and he continued. “And I gave the bastard a half dozen other anatomical suggestions of what he could do with his boots. He beat the hell out of me with these other two holding me, but as long as I had wind, I kept tellin’ him off.”
“Was this before or after they kicked you?”
“Before. I couldn’t move very much right after. I was just sort of curled up in a ball on the floor. That’s when they started yelling at me to get up, hitting me on the back with something…a couple of things, I guess…I didn’t look. I couldn’t move, and they were yellin’ at me to get up…the one guy grabbed my hair and tried to pull me up, but the hair came out instead.” Starsky took a shaky breath. “They started in on the house again after they got done kicking me. He’d tell me to do somethin’, and I wouldn’t, and he’d direct them to smash something up. It just kept on…it was like it was gonna go on forever…”
“What made them leave?”
“They busted up the doors and the stairs…Hutch, they were gonna do somethin’ else, but the guy who was callin’ the shots said no. That’s why I was upstairs. They were takin’ me up there to…they were gonna…you know…but he said it was too late, that they’d be takin’ to much of a chance—and he was kinda pissed off at that because he said they’d wasted too much time—like…doing that to me was supposed to be, I don’t know, some kinda grand finale. I guess one of ’em knocked me out because the last thing I remember is…him pullin’ my arms up and tyin’ ’em up there…and untying my ankles so he could…” Hutch noticed the bruised fingers on the sleeve of his jacket contract into a clutch on the fabric as Starsky turned his face toward the wall.
“Did they…” Hutch took a deep breath. He didn’t know how to ask the question, and he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer. “They didn’t…?”
“No. I told ya, they didn’t have time, according to their boss. He thought it was gettin’ too late, and they oughtta split.” Starsky looked back down again, and when he spoke, his voice was a shaky whisper. “When they were draggin’ me up those steps…I…I was never so scared of anything in my life.”
Hutch watched Starsky for a minute, not sure of what to say. Anything that came to mind seemed so useless. He rested his free hand on Starsky’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, buddy. Are you sure nothing happened—you’d tell me?”
“I’d tell you.” The implication being that Hutch would be the only one entrusted with that confidence. “I…I just can’t…stop thinking about it. If they hadn’t run out of time…”
“But they did. And you’re safe, buddy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah…”
“I’ll get us a uniformed guard, and I’m going to be right here. They’re not going to get near you again. You can bank on that. I promise you everything’ll be all right. Just relax, babe.”
“Okay.” Starsky was getting drowsier now, feeling a bit unburdened by having told Hutch the basic outline of his ordeal. He closed his eyes and curling his bruised fingers around the fabric of Hutch’s jacket, reassured himself his partner was right where he was supposed to be. “Hutch?” He felt himself slipping off to sleep, but there was something else he wanted to say.
“What, buddy?”
“Love you.” Most of the tension of consciousness was leaving Starsky’s features.
“Love you too, pal,” Hutch answered quietly, carefully covering the bruised but assertive fingers that held onto his jacket. He wanted to scream, go work off some of the hostility that was building up inside from listening to Starsky’s story.
Work it off? Short of taking my own posse over to Schoemacher’s house and pounding the shit out of him until he was a mass of pulp on his front porch, what would work off this hostility? Hutch closed his own eyes a minute. Starsky loved that dumb house and all of its little characteristics. What must it have felt like to watch that destruction happen? God, what went through your mind when they dragged you upstairs, knowing what they had in mind? What did they say to you? How did they tell you? If they hadn’t run out of time, would there have been anything left of you after… Hutch felt the bile rising in his throat. He swallowed convulsively a few times and tried to pull himself back together. It was more important to let Starsky sleep peacefully, if only for a couple of hours, until he was disturbed to be examined again. And there would be no escaping those sore fingers that were holding on so tenaciously without waking him.
I thought losing Sandra and Elizabeth was going to kill me. Now I know what would have killed me…losing you too. You’ve been my strength for the last five months, my anchor, my sunshine…what they were going to do to you…what they already did…could I ever say enough to make up for it? To make you not feel low and degraded and abused? Hutch resigned himself to remaining motionless on the edge of the bed, happy to watch Starsky have a short break from all the suffering he’d been through.
When the doctor came back, he’d get a hold of Dobey and ask for the guard. And he would try not to feel guilty for having pleasant thoughts of Cecile. We were looking at paintings, then just walking and talking and getting to know each other…while Starsky was being beaten, brutalized, tormented and threatened with the most unthinkable degradation…and he’d be the first one to pat me on the back and say “way to go” if I said I had fun. If I said that just maybe, someday, I’ll be up to risking it with another woman…thanks to you putting the pieces back together again, buddy. Feels like sitting here with the other half of myself. Scary to think about not being able to make it without another person…When thinking about it hurts so much, why do so many people have to remind us so damned often? I’m so sick of watching you suffer. You’re so damned gentle…God, life sucks sometimes. All you did was find a house, try to make a home, and live and let live. And this is what they do to you…
“How is he?” A whispered voice came from the door. It was Dobey.
“Sleeping.” Hutch forced a little smile.
“I’ve got a man posted outside,” Dobey continued to whisper, not moving any closer for fear of disturbing the peace that had settled over Starsky. “I’ll send Nedloe and Elliot for the statement tomorrow.”
“They’ll be a good choice,” Hutch whispered in agreement.
“Has he said anything yet?”
“Enough. They really put him through hell. It’ll be a hard story to hear. What about Schoemacher?” Dobey and Hutch were essentially lip-reading by now, wanting to avoid waking Starsky.
“Has an alibi—about as airtight as you can get. He and a group of his goons were pulled in on a drunk and disorderly downtown at a bar. Seems a group of black college students came in, and things got ugly.”
“Damn it.” Hutch’s slightly louder vocalization brought a little moan and shift from Starsky. He silently stroked the part of Starsky’s arm where his hand rested, and that seemed to quiet what little disturbance there had been.
“Well, don’t worry about anything at the precinct. We’ve got enough guys up to speed on the case. Everybody who knows Starsky wants in on finding these bastards…they’re practically lined up taking numbers. As far as the task force, Nedloe and Elliot want in on this, so I’m putting Farver and Kennedy at the helm of the Bridegroom mess. All we’re doing right now is processing tips from nut cases anyway. Just take care of him.” Dobey nodded toward Starsky. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
“Get some rest yourself, Hutch. You won’t do him any good if you pass out on him.”
“Okay. Good night.” Hutch watched him slip back out of the room and then looked back at Starsky. Well, pal, we made it through one more…
* * * *
Starsky came to, thinking he had never felt so lousy in his life. He couldn’t breathe without hurting somewhere, and moving seemed like an unattainable goal. There was a damned light shining in his eye. Then the other. Voices. He finally surrendered to waking up, realizing he was still holding onto Hutch’s jacket, and his partner hadn’t moved.
“Hey there, partner.” Hutch’s smile was the first thing to come into focus, next was the doctor from the emergency room, Mr. Poke and Pinch. If it’s got a big bruise on it and it’s swollen, wouldn’t you be able to assume it hurt without actually testing it? Starsky asked himself. At least now he was probably just going to ask him some inane questions to determine if his brain had turned to mush since he dozed off.
“Can you tell me your name?” Here we go, Starsky thought.
“Fred Night,” he replied, bringing an instant laugh out of Hutch. “Sorry.” Even Starsky had to smile because it was worth everything to see a little break in his partner’s tension. “David Starsky.”
“The year, David?”
“1981,” he replied with a sigh made shaky by the pain it caused.
“Do you know where you are?”
“In hell, I think, only it oughtta be hotter.”
“Starsk,” Hutch chided.
“Memorial Hospital.”
“You sound healthy to me.” Dr. Stevenson chuckled a little as he made a few notes on Starsky’s chart.
“Can I go home then?”
“Whoa, not so fast, pal.” The doctor was still smiling. “I want to keep an eye on you for a couple of days. I think we can let you go Tuesday afternoon if all goes well—and I think it will.”
“Tuesday?” Starsky seemed discouraged at that edict. It was Saturday night, or more truthfully, the early morning hours of Sunday.
“That’s if you’re on your best behavior. Try not to alienate all the nurses, huh?”
“I think Ms. Halleran needs a refresher course in sensitivity to patients’ needs,” Hutch spoke up. “She was going to put him flat on his back, no extra pillows. If a volunteer hadn’t given me a hand here tonight, we couldn’t have gotten him settled comfortably at all.”
“I’ll have a word with Ms. Halleran. I’m sorry you had a rough start tonight. I expect to wake you up one more time, probably around…” he looked at his watch, “four a.m. Then I’ll make sure you’re on the later breakfast rotation so you can get a little sleep. If you need anything, I’ll be around until probably seven or eight this morning.”
“Thanks, doc,” Starsky responded, forcing a little smile as the doctor took his leave. “Want your arm back?” Starsky asked Hutch, moving to relieve his partner of his bondage.
“I guess I wouldn’t object to moving over to that chair.” Hutch carefully removed his arm and Starsky rested his on the bed. “Need the bathroom yet?”
“Nah. I was gonna have a couple beers and watch the tube before…all this happened, but since I didn’t get the beers, I’m okay.”
“How about some water, huh?” Hutch poured a small cup of water and guided Starsky’s right hand while he took a few swallows. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
Hutch pulled the large padded chair across the room, bringing it to a halt as close to the bed as possible.
“Hutch?”
“What, buddy?”
“Was it Schoemacher?”
“Doesn’t look like it. But that doesn’t leave out his goons. I guess he and some of his merry men were in lock up downtown for a drunk and disorderly.”
“Swell. No leads.”
“Hey, no case business tonight. Get some sleep before the doctor and his little flashlight get back. We’ll worry about it later, okay?”
“Okay.” Starsky’s eyes drifted shut again, and Hutch dozed off shortly thereafter, sprawled in the large chair next to the bed.
* * * *
Schoemacher had the perfect alibi, and most of his known associates were in the lock up with him when Starsky was attacked. Nedloe and Elliot were therefore busily researching the network of neo-Nazi and skinhead groups in the area, hoping to find some kind of worthwhile lead. Minnie and several members of the R&I staff were putting everything ruthlessly on hold to run any computer checks or dig through any files that the investigation into Starsky’s case might require.
Nedloe and Elliot visited the hospital early the next afternoon for Starsky’s full formal statement. Hutch hadn’t budged from the room since Starsky had been admitted, with the exception of one fast trip to the cafeteria while the doctor threw him out to examine the patient. Listening to the whole story in explicit and vivid detail was not a pleasant sentence for Hutch, but he concentrated on maintaining his calm demeanor for Starsky’s sake. Starsky, for his part, held up very well telling his story, inwardly grateful he’d had some quiet time with Hutch the night before to try to deal with the initial shock of what had happened.
Further incensed by the statement, the other team of detectives left the hospital with a new resolve to bring the case to a hasty conclusion. Aside from the physical brutality, the sadistic destruction of part of the house, as well as so many photos and other items, not to mention what the capstone of the evening was originally intended to be drove them to vow double shifts until an arrest was made.
Starsky had been understandably subdued since Nedloe and Elliot left, staring toward the window and fidgeting with the hem of his blanket. He’d avoided eye contact with Hutch, and seemed to be trying to physically shy away from conversing with his partner. Knowing Starsky as he did, Hutch had a pretty good idea what the problem was. Starsky’s tale had been brutal and upsetting and reasonably graphic, but there were a few details he was obviously holding back. He took a seat on the edge of the bed and waited until Starsky turned away from the window of his own accord and looked at him.
“You left a few things out of what you told Nedloe and Elliot, didn’t you, buddy?” he asked gently but assertively. It was hard to tell if Starsky was blushing under the myriad of purple, red and blue discoloration of much of his face, but it almost looked like the little area around his ears was pinker than it had been before. “Starsk, we can’t nail these bastards if we don’t know the whole story.”
“I can’t, Hutch.” Starsky shook his head a little. “I don’t wanna…testify about somethin’ like that.”
“Listen to me.” Hutch covered Starsky’s hand with his own. “I’m your partner first, a cop second. Whatever you tell me, it doesn’t leave this room without your O.K. Got it?” This isn’t some anonymous witness…not some frightened victim I’m cajoling to make a bust…this is Starsky. And no matter what else happens, the most important thing is how he feels. Not how good a bust we make. I’m not playing cop on him, pushing for details when he feels this lousy. “I’m sorry, buddy. I didn’t mean to upset you. I just…I wanna nail these bastards.”
“The one…who really wanted to do it? He had real active hands,” Starsky said quietly.
“Enough to add a sexual assault charge?” He watched while Starsky nodded. “Okay, pal. You don’t have to give me any more details than you want to.”
“But you wanna make it a charge.” Starsky wiped at his eyes with his free hand.
“I can’t lie to you and say that I wouldn’t like to add it to the list of charges. But the most important thing to me in this case is you—not the kind of bust we make. I don’t blame you for feeling…I don’t know…but feeling confused or ashamed or scared or whatever. But you know the bottom line is that you have nothing to be ashamed of, don’t you?”
“I guess.” Starsky picked up the remote and turned on the television. He was finished with true confessions for now. “Wanna watch the soaps with me?” he asked, trying to lighten his tone a little. Hutch just nodded and smiled, returning to his usual post in the big padded chair next to the bed.
* * * *
Hutch was strangely resolved to letting others handle the case, spending his time at the hospital taking care of his partner, to the consternation of certain nurses. Starsky finally did fill in a few more blanks for Nedloe and Elliot, enough for them to add another charge to the list and be further incited to make a bust soon.
Hutch found himself dismissed Sunday night, as Starsky and Wendy seemed to have plans to watch the airing of “The Amityville Horror” on TV, and Starsky assured his partner he would be safe to leave and get some rest.
Wendy was unveiling the junk food collection on the bed table in preparation for the movie. She ordinarily didn’t work Sunday night, but she’d stopped in Sunday afternoon to see how he was doing, and after determining they were both looking forward to the thriller coming up on TV that night, she agreed to come back and watch it with him. He didn’t know why that should make him so happy. She was definitely not his usual type. She wasn’t ugly by any means, but she couldn’t exactly be called beautiful either. Still, there was something very endearing in her smile and her warm brown eyes. In all fairness, he had to admit he’d never seen her dressed up. She was either in one of those God-awful uniforms or in jeans and a big shirt to flake out and watch the movie.
“So is your partner going to take some time off to stay with you when you’re released?” She startled him out of his thoughts.
“Probably. Unless the captain nixes it. I doubt he will.”
“If you need some help, I usually am free afternoons, if I can bring my typewriter.”
“Your typewriter?”
“I’m a free-lance writer. Articles, short features…that kind of thing. That’s why I have a flexible schedule and volunteer here at night sometimes. Most volunteers don’t want the late night shift, except a few nursing students.”
“So you do this just to…well, do it? Not for college or anything?”
“No, just for me. I like working with people, and writing can make you a little isolated at times. This is a good way to meet new people, even if they aren’t usually at their best when I see them.” She smiled as she handed him a can of cola. “I hope that’s okay. I didn’t know if you were on any medication, so I was afraid to bring beer.”
“They finally had mercy on me and gave me some pain killers, so I better skip the beer anyway.”
“I didn’t think you were going to talk Hutch into leaving.”
“He needed to get out of here for awhile—grab a shower, get something to eat. I’m trying to convince him to stay home and sleep in his own bed tonight. It’s not like I’m dying or anything. But I was real glad he was here when he was.”
“Halleran is a real pain.” Wendy shook her head. “She bullies all the patients, so don’t feel like she picked you out or something. I hear Stevenson really went up one side and down the other.”
“Great. She’ll probably poison me in my sleep.”
“Only if one of the other nurses doesn’t poison her first.”
“It wasn’t just Halleran. It was…well, I was just real glad he was here.”
“How’re you feeling tonight, anyway?” She tuned in the station now, then settled in the large chair with a bag of Doritos and her own can of cola. Starsky was happily crunching cheese puffs, smiling at the thought of Nurse Halleran figuring out why there were little orange patches all over the sheets.
“Lousy. But I didn’t expect to feel much better right away. Actually, it gets worse before it gets better.”
“Sounds like the voice of experience.”
“Let’s say I’ve been through the drill more than I’d like to remember.” He inclined his head more toward Wendy. “So what about you?”
“I feel okay.” She smiled devilishly.
“I meant tell me about yourself.”
“Not much to tell.”
“Don’t buy that. Come on…give.”
“Well, I was born in Sacramento, then moved out here to become a famous screenwriter.” She cleared her throat. “When it became painfully obvious that I needed to go to plan B, I started writing short pieces and submitting them to magazines and newspapers. I got a few things published, and here I am. It’s a living, though not as lucrative as I hope it will be someday.” She paused. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”
“Not really. A bunch of creeps got into my house, did this, smashed up part of the house—it wasn’t too pleasant.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“Well,” Starsky laughed a little, “it doesn’t get much more uncomfortable than this.”
“I suppose not,” she responded, smiling. “You and Hutch seem to be pretty good friends. You’ve been partners a long time?”
“Yeah. We got to be really good friends in the academy, and we made it a goal to end up partners as soon as we could. He’s more like family. Actually, we just bought the house a few months ago that got worked over along with me. It’s a really…was a really beautiful old place—lots of room. It needed some fixing up…now, I don’t know as there’s much point. The staircase and the French doors are totaled.”
“Oh, my God—you weren’t kidding about them trashing it.”
“No, I wasn’t. They destroyed anything that made the house distinctive. I mean, even painting and patching it up won’t be the same.” He swallowed a time or two, suddenly wishing he was lying there with Hutch in the chair Wendy occupied, in that blissful silence that settled over both of them when they needed to rest and heal.
* * * *
Hutch slowed the car as he approached the house. There were four cars in the driveway and a couple others on the street. The whole first floor was lit up, and people were milling around in front of the illuminated living room windows. Completely puzzled by what he saw, he parked on the street and walked up the driveway to the side door. There was a new knob and deadbolt lock where the rickety old knob had been. The locks had obviously been changed. He turned the knob, relieved it was unlocked so he could enter his own home without knocking.
Music wafted from a radio in the living room, and the smell of fresh paint and cleaning chemicals assailed his nose. The kitchen had been tidied up, the broken chair repaired and set near the cupboards with a little sign warning “fresh glue.” He pushed the swinging door open into the dining room, and was shocked at what he saw. The house was alive with people from the precinct, most of them in grubby work clothes, all diligently performing some type of restorative task. The shattered French doors had been removed, and the gashes in the door frames had been filled in with something and stained. They looked a little scarred yet, but not bad. The swastikas were a thing of the past, having left only faint ghosts which were being covered with fresh paint.
There was little anyone could do for the staircase, but the splintered wood had been cleaned up and the steps vacuumed.
“About time you showed up,” Dobey bellowed, gesturing toward Hutch as he continued rolling paint on the wall. Dobey in overalls and a work shirt was not a sight Hutch was used to seeing. The captain seemed to rarely be in anything more casual than a tie and sweater, but now he was paint-spattered with the rest of the precinct personnel, which included Minnie, Jim Nedloe, and Jack Elliot, several other people who looked familiar but Hutch couldn’t immediately name, and of course, serving hot snacks to the workers was Huggy, sharing goodies he’d brought from The Pits.
“What…I don’t understand…” Hutch stammered, feeling awkward, shocked and deeply moved all at the same time.
“Rumor has it Starsky might get sprung Tuesday afternoon. Can’t have him walking in on this place looking the same as when he left it,” Dobey explained, meeting Hutch in the middle of the room. “We rounded up some volunteers from the department, pulled together a few supplies, and invaded your house early this afternoon. I figured you’d be tied up at the hospital most of the day.”
“I don’t know what to say,” he noticed most of the team had slowed a bit, watching him. “Thank you all, so much. I really…can’t find the right words… I know how much this is gonna mean to Starsky.”
“Shut up and have some pizza,” Huggy bailed him out of his speech-making bind by handing him a plate with two slices of pizza on it and leading him back to the TV room. “You look like hell, man.”
“I’ve been at the hospital since last night. I’m just going to grab some food and a shower and go back. Starsky was all for me getting out of there and going home, but I think he’s more worried about me than he is okay with being on his own right now.”
“How’s he doin’?” Huggy sat on the couch, across from Hutch’s seat in the overstuffed chair.
“Physically, he’ll be fine once everything heals up. Emotionally, mentally—I don’t know. He’s…Starsky. He makes it somehow. God, Hug, I’m sick of watching him…hurt. After the whole mess with Gunther…now this…damn it, he doesn’t deserve all this shit.” Hutch set the pizza, only partially eaten, on the coffee table. “The way they treated him…shouldn’t happen to the nastiest son of a bitch on earth. It’s just so fucking unfair that it happened to Starsky.” Hutch brought his clenched fist down on the arm of the chair.
“Life ain’t fair, man,” Huggy replied softly. “I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No, you don’t.” Hutch leaned back in the chair, infinitely exhausted. He fought the urge to doze and straightened up, ready to spring out of the chair.
“Hey, why not catch a few Z’s before you go—”
“I want to be back by the time the movie ends.” Hutch didn’t explain himself, and Huggy didn’t ask. “This was a really…amazing thing for everybody to do. I know I’m not too eloquent tonight. Please tell them how much this means to us, huh?”
“Sure thing, my man. But I think they know.”
Hutch didn’t lose a lot of time showering, shaving and changing clothes. He finished the cooling pizza he’d left on the coffee table in the TV room and thanked the workers again, who were beginning to disperse as it drew close to 11:00.
When he arrived at the hospital, he met Wendy in the hall on his way to Starsky’s room.
“He’s sleeping,” she informed him.
“That’s good. You guys enjoy the movie?”
“Well, part of it. He slept through the last hour, but I think he’s doing all right.”
“Thanks. I’m going to go spend a little time with him.”
“Goodnight.” She smiled and headed down the hall. Hutch slipped quietly into the room and settled in the chair that was still warm. He’d have preferred to sit facing Starsky, but he didn’t want to disturb him by moving the chair, so he resigned himself to face the end of the news broadcast instead. Apparently Wendy had opted not to wake Starsky with turning off the TV. Hutch was startled when a hand brushed his shoulder lightly.
“Hey.” Starsky was smiling at him.
“Thought you were asleep.” Hutch smiled back, turning his chair to face his partner.
“Nah, I was fakin’ it.” Starsky winced a little as he tried to shift positions onto his side. Finally successful, he still didn’t look comfortable.
“You okay there, pal?”
“I’m gettin’ stiff from bein’ in the same spot so long. This hurts worse, I think.”
“You wanna sit up, maybe move a little?”
“No, but I probably oughtta. I kinda have to go anyway.”
“Okay.” Hutch assisted with the painful process of getting his partner on his feet, and Starsky insisted he could deal with his own personal needs once he was in motion. Hutch busied himself fluffing pillows and straightening sheets, chortling a little as he fished out a half dozen cheese puffs from amidst the mound of pillows. “I see Wendy brought snacks,” he called to his partner, who was just coming out of the bathroom.
“Oh, yeah, the cheese puffs,” Starsky admitted with a self-deprecating grin. Hutch met him halfway and supported his arm as he made the uneasy motion to sit on the edge of the bed. “I knew I was losin’ ’em somewhere.”
“How about sitting up a minute or two?”
“Yeah, this hurts but it feels good to change positions.”
“Got some good news for you,” Hutch announced, sitting on the edge of the chair. “Dobey rounded up a bunch of people from the precinct, and they’ve done all sorts of clean-up and painting at the house. You really wouldn’t know it was…well, that it was messed up as badly as it was.”
“That’s nice.” Starsky was flexing his right hand, testing the fingers that seemed less swollen though more vividly colored.
“Starsk, I know that fixing up the rooms doesn’t make what happened any better, but—”
“Did they fix the doors? The staircase?” He watched Hutch’s helpless expression. He knew it was misplaced hostility, but it needed to come out sometime.
“No, buddy, there wasn’t much they could do with those just yet. They did take the old stuff out, so everything’s at least neat and—”
“And what? I’m gonna forget what happened in the living room because they painted over the swastikas? I’m not gonna think about what they told me they were gonna do to me upstairs?” Starsky’s voice was shaking, but he was working hard at keeping his emotions under control. He was angry now, and all the time he’d spent being subjected to those nuts’ abuse and torment, writhing around ineffectually while they beat and degraded him was all flooding into this outburst. It felt like some kind of torrent that wouldn’t stop. He grabbed a vase of flowers off the nightstand and threw it against the opposite wall, instantly regretting the motion and holding onto his throbbing side.
“Starsk, it’s okay to be mad but don’t hurt yourself, huh?” Hutch looked around the room, picked up another, smaller vase and handed it to Starsky. “Try this one. It’s not as heavy. Just don’t throw it as far.” Hutch’s tone was gentle and serious. There was no trace of ridicule or reprimand in the words.
“Nah, this one’s from you.” He looked at the mixture of yellow and white daisies in it, still breathing faster than his ribs wished to allow, trying to concentrate on the bright flowers while he attempted to slow his respiration back to normal. Hutch stood up beside him and put an arm carefully around his shoulders, rubbing his arm gently and slowly. The motion soon seemed to guide the speed of his previously rapid breathing as Starsky leaned into the contact.
“What happened?” The infamous Nurse Halleran entered the room, noticing the broken glass on the floor.
“A little accident with the vase,” Hutch explained. “I’ll be happy to clean it up.”
“I’ll send someone in from housekeeping. Mr. Starsky, you belong in bed.”
“I’ve been there all day. I was gettin’ stiff.”
“That isn’t unusual, given your injuries. It’s way past time for lights out.” She didn’t say any more than that before she left the room.
“Maybe she’s been declawed,” Starsky suggested, smiling slightly. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, buddy. The dragon lady’s probably right though. You ought to get settled again and get a little sleep for real.”
“Okay.” Starsky allowed himself to be helped back into a relatively comfortable position again, feeling drowsy as Hutch drew the blanket up to his chest. “Are you gonna be able to get time off when I get outta here?”
“I talked to Dobey. He’s been great about everything. He knows you’re not on your feet yet.” Hutch positioned his chair close to the bed again and sat down, resigned to another night in a semi-upright position. “Movie boring?”
“No. I just got sick of making small talk with Wendy. She’s a real nice person but she never shuts up. I wasn’t up to it, so I pretended to conk out about the time the kid gets an imaginary playmate with red eyes—remember that part?”
“I think my personal favorite was that pit of black goop in the basement.”
“That was cool too. I just didn’t think I should risk opening my eyes to watch. Would have started up the monologue again—kinda like pullin’ the string on one of those dolls?”
“I get the picture, buddy,” Hutch responded, laughing a little.
“If it’s not Schoemacher, who do you think it is, Hutch? I mean, why? It’s not like I have some kind of sign in the front yard that says ‘Attention Nazis: Jew Inside’.”
“That’s not funny.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” Starsky responded, his slight smile fading rapidly. Morose humor was usually his last resort when he felt too desolate to come up with anything else. He and Terry had been alike that way. At the very end, he had told her he didn’t want to talk about basketball, and she’d said something like “do you want to talk about funerals?” Remembering how that comment ripped his heart out, he regretted using similar humor on Hutch.
“Nedloe and Elliot are tracking down all the extremist groups in the area—basic legwork and hunting. Dobey said there are a lot of folks pitching in.”
“How about you? You want in on the witch hunt too?”
“I’d rather be here. Besides, I feel better being on top of the situation, watching out for you. I know Dobey’s assigning the best people to guard the room, but even the best still isn’t the same as knowing I’m doing it myself.”
“I’m kinda glad you feel that way.” Starsky’s eyes seemed to be drifting shut.
“Relax and sleep, pal. I’m right here.”
“Always are,” Starsky responded, grinning a little. “You’re worried about ’em comin’ back for me, aren’t you?” he asked, his smile disappearing. “You don’t have to answer that, ’cause I already know. I am too. I’m…I’m really afraid…if they came back…I couldn’t…if they had more time and they did…”
“Starsk, you listen to me.” Hutch moved from his chair to sit on the edge of the bed, and placed one hand on either side of Starsky’s face. “I give you my word they won’t ever touch you again—do you hear me?”
“You can’t promise—”
“I am promising. Right here, right now. The rest of the world can do the glamorous part of this and catch the bad guys. Until that happens, I’m going to be no more than a hiccup away—got that? Have I ever broken a promise to you?”
“No,” Starsky responded, shaking his head slightly.
“I’m not about to start now. We’re going to get through the next couple nights, then we’ll get settled back home, and I won’t let you out of my sight until we know who’s responsible and they’ve been stopped.”
“Okay.” Starsky’s eyes did close and stay closed this time, and he felt much safer than he had while his partner was gone during the movie. Confident that Hutch could, and would, handle anything that came up, he let himself slip, and within moments, was sleeping deeply.
CHAPTER 6
You’re the story of my life,
You’re the one that got me through the night,
You’ve been right here by my side
When I needed you…
Starsky was pleasantly surprised at how much better the house looked than when he’d last seen it. There was no replacing his beloved French doors or the ruined staircase, but what could be done had been done. The main staircase was considered out of commission until something could be done to put in a new banister. A new banister in this old house…it’s not right, and it won’t be the same thing, Starsky thought sadly as he made the slow ascent to the second floor with Hutch’s help. He was somewhat relieved, though, not to have to go up the main stairs again. Flashbacks of being dragged up those steps in horrible pain, and fear he couldn’t even describe…
Hutch got him settled in an overstuffed chair in the library and had moved the color TV (with Huggy’s panting assistance) upstairs so he was armed with his remote. The doctor had suggested keeping the runs up and down stairs to a minimum for a few more days, so Hutch was making the upstairs as appealing a spot as possible.
A phone call from Jim Nedloe further brightened Starsky’s day.
“We’ve got something,” Jim announced triumphantly.
“What?” Starsky tried straightening in the chair and gave up. He stayed slumped and listened.
“You know that photo that you got in the mail?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we found a thumbprint on the back of it, and traced it to a guy who had been arrested for brawling at a rally—but he’s not a neo-Nazi, he’s a Jew. It was stolen out of his grandfather’s collection of Holocaust artifacts. Apparently, the old man gives lectures at colleges and various other places here and around the country, and he has a very large collection of Holocaust stuff. This photo came up missing after his speech at Radnor Community College last month. It’s not tied together in a neat bundle yet, but it’s a start.”
“That’s great. Just nice to know something’s happening.”
“We’ll get these guys, Starsky. And when we do…well, it’d be a hell of a shame if any of them resisted arrest,” Nedloe concluded with a devilish note in his voice.
“Don’t do anything on my account to screw up nailing ’em in court.”
“Don’t worry about that, man. This case is gonna be so damn tight when we’re done, it’s gonna make history in the DA’s office.”
“As long as it nails their asses to the wall, I’ll be happy. Thanks for calling.”
“Okay. Hey, you feeling any better?”
“Yeah, some. I’m glad to be out of the hospital. My head’s better.”
“That’s good. We’re all in this with you, Starsky. We’re gonna nail these bastards but good.”
“Thanks. That means a lot.”
After Starsky hung up, he heard Hutch’s footsteps in the hall. His partner soon appeared with a tray laden with enough food for both their dinners. It was a little after five, and not having eaten since a fairly pathetic hospital lunch tray was served, the food was a welcome sight. Hutch was busily spreading it out on the coffee table near the couch and chair when he asked about the call.
“Who was on the phone?”
“Jim. He said they’ve got a lead.” He proceeded to explain the photo lead to Hutch.
“At least that gives us a starting point where to look.”
“Yeah, well, at least it’s a small college.”
“Narrows it down somewhat, but it depends on how many visitors they had to their little program.” Hutch handed Starsky a plate bearing a pasta concoction that actually looked quite tasty. “It’s linguine alfredo. There’s cheese in it, so it’s not completely healthy,” Hutch explained, sinking into the couch holding his own plate.
“It looks great—and I know what linguine alfredo is, smart ass,” Starsky added, smiling at his partner’s little grin.
Hutch watched Starsky’s head droop a little to the side as he began dozing again in the chair. Convinced his ailing partner had been up and around as much as he should be after just getting out of the hospital, Hutch decided to start the process of getting him bedded down for the night.
“Starsk?” He waited for the other to respond, his eyes opening as much as they were capable of with the swelling around them. “Wanna hit the hay, buddy?”
“Guess I should. Just not lookin’ real forward to movin’.”
“I know.” Hutch got up and moved to the side of Starsky’s chair, taking a hold of his left hand and putting his arm around his back. “I’m not going to put any more pressure than I have to on you, babe. Push up with your right side.”
“Okay.” Starsky obeyed, his eyes widening at the upward motion.
“Squeeze my hand, buddy.” Hutch felt a crushing pressure while Starsky made the effort to stand. “Hurts pretty bad, doesn’t it?” He kept a supporting arm around his partner.
“Haven’t felt this lousy since…since Gunther.” Starsky seemed to lean into the contact briefly before starting to move forward.
“You want to try soaking in the tub for a little while? It might help.”
“I guess. It’s just…hard gettin’ up and down, ya know?”
“I know. Come on. We’ll get you in a nice warm tub and then zonk you out with some pain pills. How about that?”
“You’re the doctor.” Starsky managed a little grin.
It was difficult for Hutch to see the profusion of bruises on his partner’s body without reacting violently. There didn’t seem to be more than a few inches of clear skin anywhere. There was no way to help Starsky move that didn’t cause him pain, and maybe worst of all was the quiet way he was taking it. If Starsky had the sniffles or a sprained ankle or even indigestion, he whined. If he was suffering to the threshold of his endurance, he took it like a trouper. The only telltale signs of his discomfort was the occasional bulging of his eyes or a white-knuckled squeeze of Hutch’s hand or whatever support was nearby.
“Water feels good.” Starsky’s face registered some relief once he was settled in the warm tub. It was the first time the stress had left his features momentarily since they’d begun the journey from the chair.
“Loosens up the aches and pains a little, huh?” Hutch tried to keep his tone light as he lathered up a washcloth with soap and prepared to do Starsky’s back for him.
“I can do this myself, Hutch. I’m not a baby, ya know.”
“You can’t twist around and do your back so shut up and let me do it,” Hutch retorted, the gentleness of his voice negating any of the sternness of the words.
“Okay.” Starsky’s tone was defeated. It wasn’t that this was such a new scenario to them; after the shooting, Starsky had his choice of Hutch or a visiting nurse to help him with a lot of his personal needs. Having chosen his partner, they had both had to get over any inhibitions—Starsky, asking for help when needed, and Hutch, not being deterred by Starsky’s stubborn unwillingness to do that very thing and helping him anyway. None of that made Starsky feel any less robbed of his dignity in this whole situation. The men who had entertained themselves with torturing him for two solid hours had stripped him of most of it, and being dependent on his partner again for so much felt like it took the rest away, despite Hutch’s matter-of-fact willingness to wait on him hand and foot.
“Is the pain any worse around your lower back, buddy?” Hutch asked, carefully rinsing off the soap.
“Not really. Not any better, either.”
“Just want to make sure your kidneys are doin’ okay. The doctor said they were bruised.”
“I coulda told him that. What was his first clue? The big bruises there or the fact I yelled when he poked them?” Starsky shook his head. “God, I hate doctors sometimes.”
“You got kind of OD’d on ’em after Gunther, I know.” Hutch moved into Starsky’s view and started soaping up the cloth again.
“Give me that.”
“I’ll do your feet and then you can take over. You can’t stretch that far and you know it so don’t bitch at me about it.”
“I hate this.” Starsky shook his head and stared at the tiled wall next to the tub.
“Hey.” Hutch waited, but Starsky wouldn’t turn back to look at him. “Hey.” He waited again, and this time the other turned back to face him, brushing at his eyes as he did, which only made his face wetter since his hands had been in the water. That seemed to frustrate him more. “I remember somebody I know taking care of me a few times when I couldn’t do it myself. So what’s the big deal, huh?”
“I don’t know.” Starsky looked away, staring straight ahead.
“I know you had a bad time of it, pal. And I know they made you feel pretty lousy—and I’m not just talking about the bruises.” Hutch’s comment was greeted with silence, but a bob of the other’s adam’s apple. “Anything they said—you know it was a load of crap, right?” There was a slight nod. “That doesn’t change how it makes you feel, though.”
“Not really,” he replied finally, in a slightly choked voice.
“Starsky, there’s no indignity in needing some help. And what they did to you…it shouldn’t rob you of your dignity—it robs them of theirs, makes them less than human. Any…being who could inflict this kind of damage…who could enjoy making another human being suffer just for entertainment…those people aren’t human—they’re raw sewage living in human bodies.” Starsky still said nothing. “It’s okay if you need to cry, buddy. I understand.”
“I’m turnin’ into a prune. Can we just get this over with?”
“Sure, pal.” Hutch started on Starsky’s feet, as promised. “What the hell is this?” Hutch couldn’t hide the anger in his voice when he noticed Starsky’s oft-sprained ankle was bruised and swollen. He thought he had detected a limp earlier, but with Starsky needing support to walk and not moving very well anyway, he had dismissed it as that.
“He twisted it. I kicked him when he untied my ankles.”
“Does it hurt much now?” Hutch tried to consciously gentle his tone. He hadn’t meant to snap at Starsky and had handled his washing job a lot more roughly and hastily than necessary. There was so much anger welling up inside that Hutch felt he might spontaneously combust on the spot.
“Compared to everything else, it’s no big deal, I guess.”
“Want me to put some ice on it when you get out of here?” Hutch asked, handing him the cloth and moving toward the bathroom door. Starsky shook his head. “I’m going to turn back the bed. You stay put in there until I get back. If you slip, it’s not going to do your ribs a lot of good.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Starsky executed an intentionally sloppy salute with a crooked grin. He regretted clipping Hutch off as tersely as he had, but in one more moment he would have been crying like a baby, and that was a little more degrading that he could handle on top of his partner having to partially bathe him.
Hutch walked purposefully out of the bathroom and around the corner of Starsky’s bedroom doorway. He leaned against the wall and worked consciously at calming himself down. Rage was consuming him, the overpowering desire to avenge Starsky’s suffering ate at his insides like hydrochloric acid. And I can’t keep taking it out on him. He’s been brutalized enough without me getting abrupt. There was a look in Starsky’s eyes that made it seem as if he would shatter into a million pieces at the wrong stern word. There’s so much unexpressed anguish in there, and so much fear, and something else indescribable that I just want to make go away. Hutch gathered his thoughts and set about the task of getting the bed ready so Starsky would be as comfortable as possible.
Hutch made good on his word, turning back the bed, arranging the pillows similarly to how they’d been arranged in the hospital, and returning to retrieve his water-logged partner. Starsky felt even worse about behaving like a jerk when he really concentrated on the way Hutch was moving. His back had to be acting up again, and pulling Starsky up and down couldn’t be making it feel any better. Hutch had only sat down for a little while to eat dinner and then returned to watch TV for awhile after cleaning it up. Otherwise, he’d been on his feet, waiting on Starsky, or sleeping in a chair by his bed in the hospital.
“I’m sorry I acted like such an ass in there,” Starsky said quietly as Hutch finished drawing the blanket up to his chest.
“A person can only hide their true nature so long, Gordo,” Hutch responded with a little smile.
“I mean it.”
“I know. No sweat, buddy. You’re entitled.” Hutch dropped a couple of pills in Starsky’s hand and steadied the water glass while he drank to chase them.
“The tub was a good idea. I feel a little better.”
“Good. You want me to hang around ’til you fall asleep?”
“Nah, I’m okay. Go get some rest, buddy. You looked wiped out.”
“I’m kind of looking forward to sleeping prone for a change,” Hutch replied, chuckling a little. “I’ll leave a light on in the hall, and I’m leaving our doors open. If you need anything at all, just call me, okay?”
“Yeah, I will. Thanks.” He watched Hutch head for the door and turn out the overhead light. The soft yellow light from the hall still cast a comforting glow in the room.
“‘night, Starsk.”
“‘night, partner.”
* * * *
Starsky spit out the pills from under his tongue. The thought of dozing into a drug-induced stupor and not being in possession of his faculties unnerved him. It was different at the hospital, with a guard on the door and Hutch posted like a human guard dog by his bed. There was a unit keeping an eye on the house, and Hutch was right down the hall…but still, those freaks had gotten in once, and if they were sneaky or clever enough…
The thunder clapped loudly outside and lightning flashed through the thin curtains. The involuntary start made several points of pain throb. It was stupid not to take the pills, but that didn’t make him any less afraid to do it. Another roar of thunder and glare of lightning extinguished the lights. He repressed the urge to call to Hutch. If I felt like a big baby because he was helping me in the bathroom, how’m I gonna feel whining to him because the light went out? Like a bigger baby. Some hot-shot cop…afraid of the dark and a little thunder.
The wind had picked up now, and there seemed to be a symphony of noises assailing him from all sides: the thunder, the creaking of the old house…or was it something else? Almost sounds like footsteps somewhere, the way those floorboards are creaking…on the main stairs, maybe? Or somebody on the first floor walking around?
He forced himself into a sitting position, grunting at the pain the effort caused. He didn’t want to yell to Hutch in case there really was someone down there. He pulled himself painfully out of the bed and made his way slowly and stealthily down the hall to Hutch’s room.
* * * *
Hutch had almost forgotten how tiring taking care of a convalescing person could be. Starsky never complained or demanded anything, but he still wasn’t able to do most things without some help. Three nights of sleeping upright hadn’t worked any wonders on Hutch’s back, either. He was more than relieved to sink into the softness of his bed and drift off to sleep, with his partner tucked safely in his room, probably zonked by now with the pain medication. The thunder and lightning of the storm raging outside was a bit annoying, but he honestly figured he was exhausted enough that he wouldn’t care.
Hearing footsteps in the hall startled him. Even though it was shadowy, it was easy to make out Starsky’s outline in his doorway.
“Hutch?”
“Everything okay, buddy?”
“I heard something downstairs.”
“You sure it wasn’t the storm?” Hutch pulled himself up in bed a little.
“No…but it sounded like…somebody was down there…” Hutch let the words register, and thinking this had to be the ultimate sacrifice one human could be asked to make for another after three nights sleeping in a chair, he got out of bed and picked up his gun. He didn’t want to think about the stiffness in his back, or the delicious fatigue that had been sending him into blissful unconsciousness.
“Let’s take a look.” He tried to force a reassuring grin. He was positive this was all a figment of Starsky’s imagination.
“The lights don’t work.” That seemed to unnerve Starsky greatly.
“Flashlight.” Hutch groped his way to the desk in the corner of his room and pulled a flashlight out of the drawer. “Storm must have knocked down some lines. You wait for me up here. Go lock yourself in your room, and if I’m not back in ten minutes, call back up, okay?”
“I’m not waitin’ up here while you go down there.”
“Starsk, you can’t move very fast right now. If anything happens, I can’t worry about watching out for you. Please—wait in your room.” Hutch’s voice had come out sharper than he planned, but if there was an intruder, he didn’t have time to soften every word to his partner.
“Okay.” Starsky went back into his room, and when Hutch had heard the door lock click, he continued downstairs. A thorough search of the house revealed nothing. The storm was providing a symphony of sounds, creaking and groaning from the house and wild flashes of lightning. It wasn’t too unusual that someone who was nervous anyway would pick up on these noises as causes for alarm. Massaging his protesting back, Hutch plodded up the back stairs and knocked on Starsky’s door.
“All clear, pal. Must’ve been the storm. The streetlights are all out too, so I guess it’s some downed lines that got the power.” The door unlocked, and then opened.
“Sorry, Hutch. I thought I heard something.”
“I thought those pain pills usually knock you out.” Hutch walked in past Starsky, who made his way slowly toward his bed.
“They make me nauseous.”
“Since when?” Hutch was snapping a little now, but he was too damned tired to care, and he’d have matched his back pain against his partner’s at the moment and considered he’d win the contest. Furthermore, the least Starsky could do was take his medication without being spoon-fed and coddled to do it.
“Starsky, take the pills and maybe we can both get some sleep.” Hutch dumped a couple in the hand Starsky reluctantly held up. He watched as his partner put them in his mouth and drank the half glass of water Hutch handed him to chase them. “You need help getting settled again?” His tone softened a little. He knew he was taking out not only his fatigue, but his own misery over Starsky’s beating, yet again, on Starsky himself.
“No, that’s okay.”
“Yell if you need anything,buddy,” he said as he made his way to the door. He could almost sense physically that there was more the other needed, but he gave in to the fatigue and returned to the comfort of his own bed. Starsky would be asleep soon now anyway, courtesy of his medication.
The storm kept Hutch tossing and turning somewhat, but he was tired enough to get at least some light sleep. Again, something disturbed him sufficiently to wake him up.
“Hutch?” Starsky was at the door again. “I’m sorry…don’t be mad, okay? I…I can’t sleep. I didn’t want the pills…I didn’t take ’em.”
“What’s wrong, buddy?” Hutch instantly regretted his lapse of patience with Starsky earlier, and sat up in bed.
“I…I guess maybe it’s the storm…I keep…thinkin’ I hear somebody downstairs, and I don’t want to take those pills… ’cause then if somebody did come…I couldn’t hear…I wouldn’t wake up.”
“Do you feel any worse?”
“No, but…I…I’m scared, Hutch. I know it’s silly, but I just…I can’t…”
“Come ‘ere.” Starsky came slowly, his gait seriously impeded by pain, and sat on the edge of Hutch’s bed, visibly grateful. “You know that Dobey’s got a unit watching the house, and we’ve got all new locks on the doors—we’re safe here, pal.”
“I guess I know that. I…I’m afraid of…bein’ this scared, I guess. I mean, before, when something kinda like this happened with Marcos’ nuts or even the whole Gunther thing…once it was over, I was okay—I mean, I was a little freaked out, but I got over it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being afraid, Starsk. First of all—and I’m not saying this means you should feel scared here tonight—but those other times, I could say ‘it’s all over,’ or ‘they’re dead,’ or ‘he’s in jail.’ I can’t say that this time. You’re not being unreasonable to be concerned about the possibility of another encounter with these turkeys. It isn’t gonna happen, because Dobey and I aren’t going to let it. But that doesn’t make you crazy for worrying about it.”
“It’s just…they were here, in the house. When all that shit happened with Bellamy getting into my place and shooting me up full of that stuff…I never slept another peaceful night in that room. But I don’t wanna give up on this place. I love this house, Hutch. It feels like home…it’s different than just some apartment I rent.”
“Listen to me. They’re not going to get back in here. And there’s nothing wrong with you for being afraid. People who have break-ins, get vandalized, robbed…we heard about their feelings of being violated back in the academy. Victims of those crimes suffer from that intrusion. And it takes awhile to get some peace of mind back. Not only did they get in the house, but they attacked you in your house…and it wasn’t just a bump on the head because you surprised a burglary attempt.”
Starsky’s bruises were ugly in the flashing blue-white of the lightning. Dark marks on his thigh and leg visible below the fabric of the shorts were a reminder that the bruises Hutch was looking at on his partner’s face extended like some kind of horrible body suit from his head to his knees. And for some reason, that bruised hand bothered Hutch to an extraordinary degree. Maybe it was because it was symbolic of the level of cruelty used against his partner—that something as natural and innocent as reaching out for a beloved photo would be punished so harshly—and all the sadism of what Starsky had been through pierced Hutch’s soul to its very core each time he saw that hand struggle slightly to accomplish something without being slowed by the pain.
Hutch got out of bed and started down the hall. He heard Starsky holler a question to him, but he quickly gathered up some extra pillows from Starsky’s room along with the pain medication and headed back to his room before answering.
“What’re you doin’?” Starsky asked, as Hutch began depositing his armload on the bed.
“You’re going to get settled in here with me for tonight. We both need some sleep.”
“I’m sorry I’m bein’ such a pest. I can go back to my own room. I’ll take the pillows’n stuff back with me.”
“Come on, get in. Don’t argue with me,” Hutch ordered, with a completely feigned firmness in his voice. Starsky obeyed willingly, and was soon settled in a reasonably comfortable arrangement of pillows behind his back and under his arm to keep the pressure off his ribs. “Okay, we’re gonna try this one more time with the pain pills—and no more under-the-tongue maneuvers either—got it?”
“Got it.” Starsky held out his hand, took the pills, and really swallowed them this time with the water Hutch hurried back to the bathroom to pour. Hutch climbed into his side of the bed and settled in, facing his partner. “Comfortable?”
“Yeah…” The reply was a little unsteady and quiet. In a flash of lightning, Hutch thought he saw the wetness of tears on his partner’s face, and he brushed Starsky’s cheek lightly with his thumb to confirm that suspicion.
“What’s the matter, buddy? You want to talk to me about it?”
“I was so afraid when they dragged me up here…I mean, I didn’t know how I could feel a whole lot worse, after they got done kickin’ me…but…I…” His voice broke badly and he struggled to continue. “…I begged God to please just…let me die…before…I didn’t wanna live through that.”
“Aw, Starsk,” Hutch muttered, sliding closer and carefully putting his arm around the other’s shoulders. Starsky rested his head against Hutch’s chest and cried softly. “They’re not gonna get near you again, I promise you.” He lay there in silence for awhile, feeling the warmth of Starsky’s tears against his t-shirt. “You must be hurting pretty bad skipping that medication for so long.” He felt a little nod against his chest. “Just hang on, babe. The pills’ll help in a few minutes. Hurts to cry, too, doesn’t it?” Another nod, and more choked sobs.
“I know it had to be pretty scary, buddy. I understand.” Feeling like Starsky needed a big bear hug, but fearing putting any pressure on the battered body, Hutch slid his hand into the other’s hair and pressed his head closer, leaning his chin on Starsky’s curls. “Everything’s gonna be okay, pal. I’m right here,” Hutch murmured, feeling as wracked by the tears and pain as his partner was.
“It was like…it was worse…than bein’ some kind of…animal…what they did to me…to the house…just for no…good reason. Just because…of what…I am,” Starsky choked out.
“Starsky, don’t you ever dare feel like anything less than what you are because of those sorry sons’a bitches. You hear me?” He heard a loud sniffle, and Hutch wondered how he’d speak the next time himself without breaking down. He’d never let himself feel the impact of Starsky’s suffering, being so busy trying to make it better for his partner that he’d pushed his own feelings aside.
“Yeah.” The word barely made it out before another little sob followed it.
“You’re okay, buddy. You’re safe.” He lightly ran his hand back and forth across Starsky’s upper back, trying not to put any pressure on the bruises there. “Just close your eyes and let the pills work their magic.” He encouraged Starsky’s head to rest on the pillow, bringing his face out of the little haven created by the blanket and Hutch himself. “Feeling a little sleepy there, tiger?” Hutch asked softly, smiling with relief at the peaceful expression on Starsky’s almost-sleeping face as he smoothed a couple of stray curls off his partner’s forehead.
“Yeah,” he mumbled back. “You must get awful sick’a takin’ care of me.”
“I get sick of seeing you hurt. There’s a big difference. Sometimes that makes me irritable. But I’m not sick of being there for you. Not ever. Got that?” Another little nod followed. Starsky’s hand clamped on Hutch’s wrist.
“Hush?” It was a nearly-sleeping attempt at his name.
“What, buddy?”
“Stay w’me.”
“It’s my bed, dummy. I’m not going anywhere.”
There was a little grin on Starsky’s face as he dozed off to sleep.
* * * *
There was music. Starsky felt the drug-induced stupor lifting slightly, and he focused on the sound. Hutch’s voice, the guitar…that was worth forcing the issue and waking up completely. Hutch was sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed, looking like he’d been up and dressed for hours, strumming softly on the guitar and singing “You’ve Got A Friend.” In Starsky’s opinion, he put James Taylor and Carole King both to shame. It was so rare lately for Hutch to light somewhere with his guitar and play for more than a moment or two, Starsky was afraid the moment would be over before he was coherent enough to appreciate it.
Hutch just smiled when he noticed his audience was conscious, and finished his song.
“What’d I do to deserve that?” Starsky asked drowsily, not really concerned with the pain that assailed him the moment he stirred. At that question, it occurred to Hutch it would take him most of the day to explain what Starsky had done to deserve that particular song, so he opted for an easier answer.
“Guess I just felt like playing.” Starsky’s return smile was pure joy.
“Play somethin’ else, huh?”
“Your breakfast’ll get cold, buddy.” Hutch set the guitar aside and moved toward his partner to help him get propped up so he could eat his breakfast off the tray that was sitting on the dresser.
“You can sing while I eat,” Starsky offered hopefully.
“What d’you think this is, dinner theater? Man, what a demanding audience.” Hutch set the tray in place. There were scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, and orange juice on the tray.
“Thanks, buddy. This looks great.” Starsky started digging into the food, then noticed banging and voices coming from outside. The window was open slightly, letting in the fresh air and the sounds from the ground below. “What’s all the racket?”
“The contractor just showed up this morning to start work on the front porch. I also had him take a look at the staircase. He’s going to give us an estimate.”
“I hate to ask what that’ll cost.”
“Our insurance’ll cover it. You know, that is one upside to damage to the house. They apparently thought they were doing something negative by ripping up part of the carpeting in the living room and on the stairs.”
“That was the only thing I can honestly say I was glad to see destroyed,” Starsky responded, smiling slightly as he chewed. “I was going to ask them to tear out the carpeting up here, too, but they were short on time…” Starsky chuckled a little and looked up to meet Hutch’s relieved expression. “I’m gonna be okay, Hutch. And you were right about the house. It’ll get fixed up.”
“You seem in good spirits this morning.” Hutch returned to his seat on the foot of the bed.
“Look at that weather out there,” Starsky commented on the sunshine streaming in through the window. “Last night was such a terrible storm, but this morning, there’s all this sunshine…kinda symbolic, maybe?”
“You’re right, pal. The storm’s over.”
“Now we just have to clean up after it. Think maybe I could go supervise for awhile later? I’d really like to get some air.”
“I guess if we took the steps real slowly, it would be okay.”
“I’d probably get my strength back much faster if you’d sing something else.”
“That might be the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said,” Hutch responded, laughing, but reaching for the guitar at the same time.
“Not really,” Starsky replied, grinning.
Hutch gave in and played three more songs for his greedy audience, beginning to believe that his performance had healing qualities. Starsky seemed not only more cheerful, but slightly more mobile as he shaved and got dressed. It was almost noon when Starsky made his way slowly downstairs with his partner admonishing him to watch his step, walking down slightly ahead of him to catch any slips. The trek was easier than he’d anticipated, though he didn’t plan to make it often until breathing was a little less painful.
He was pleasantly surprised that Hutch was willing to take time to just sit outside under a big shade tree in a lawn chair and watch the foundation and framework for the new porch being established. The old one had been torn off at dawn, while Starsky’s pain pills kept him zonked until almost noon. Now, he could watch the progress on the new one begin. Stretched out in a lounge chair with the rustle of the leaves above him, Starsky was getting back a little of his old enthusiasm for the house. It was not the source of his bad experience…the slimeballs who did it were, and they had nothing to do with the house.
“Tough life,” a voice startled Hutch, but didn’t stir Starsky out of the doze that had claimed him ten minutes earlier. Dobey was standing before them.
“Have a chair. I’ll go grab another one from the garage.” One thing they had indulged in buying for the house before they ever moved in were lawn chairs. While Hutch was gone, Starsky stirred and woke up, looking a bit startled at seeing Dobey.
“Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep, Starsky,” Dobey quipped.
“Hi, Cap. When’d you get here?”
“Couple minutes ago. Hutch went to get another chair. Tough life you’ve got here, laid out in the shade watching other people work.”
“Yeah,” Starsky replied, snorting a little laugh. “Sure is a tough way to get a vacation though.” He rested a hand on his damaged ribs.
“I’ll second that.” Hutch rejoined the group, opening his lawn chair and completing their semi-circular chair pattern with Dobey in the middle.
“Well, this isn’t completely a social call. Nedloe and Elliot have someone down at the precinct we think might be one of the turkeys who attacked you, Starsky. We need some kind of ID.”
“I didn’t see any of them—they all wore ski masks.”
“I realize that, but you said a couple of them had distinctive voices.”
“Yeah…one was real nasal-like, and another one had a German accent—but I think it was a put on one—and not terribly good, either.”
“Take a listen to this.” Dobey turned on a small, hand-held cassette recorder.
“I told you I don’t know anything about some cop gettin’ worked over,” the voice protested in its high, nasal-twang.
“That’s him!” Starsky straightened in his chair, wincing a little. “That’s the one—the one who…the one who laid it out for me real clearly what was gonna happen upstairs. I’d know that voice anywhere.”
“I want a shot at questioning him,” Hutch spoke up immediately.
“I can’t let you do that,” Dobey retorted.
“I’m telling you, Captain, I can get it out of him.”
“Starsky’s ID’ll shake him up a bit. I’m sure we can get him to give up his friends pretty easily to save himself a little hard time.”
“I just want to be the one to do the questioning. I won’t beat it out of him if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Frankly, I wouldn’t let you and a weapon within a hundred yards of this suspect.”
“Suspect?” Starsky spoke up. “Excuse me, Cap’n, but he’s no suspect. He’s the one. I’m never gonna forget his voice.”
“I just want a shot at questioning him. You know I’m good at what I do. Besides, the fact he beat the hell out of my partner might make him afraid of me to start with—without my ever having to do anything.”
“Well…all right. You can give it a shot. But if you make one false move, Hutch, I’ll pull you out of there so fast you won’t know what hit you.”
“Got it. Oh,” he glanced back at Starsky.
“I’ll be okay here. I can watch the building project.”
“I’ll give Huggy a call.”
“Hutch, I don’t need a baby sitter for pete’s sake. I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t argue with me,” Hutch admonished with a raised forefinger as he strode back toward the house.
“Damn, if he isn’t gettin’ bossy,” Starsky grumbled under his breath.
“Starsky, I never asked you this, but now that the investigation is moving forward—you are prepared to testify against these creeps, aren’t you?”
“I don’t look forward to it in open court, no. I’m not prepared. But if you mean do I plan on testifying against them if it comes to that, you’re damn straight I do.”
“That’s what I needed to hear.” Dobey stood up as Hutch emerged from the house, wearing his holster and carrying a jacket.
“Huggy’s on his way over. Should be here in about fifteen minutes.”
“Go ahead. I’ll be fine right here.” He noted Hutch’s skeptical expression. “Look, I’m not gonna move outta this chair, and if I fall out of it, there are only about six guys working on the porch that can pick me back up again. Go. And then get back here and tell me all the gory details.”
“Okay. But you stay put.”
“Scout’s honor,” Starsky saluted, but Hutch just rolled his eyes and hurried to his car, backing out so he could follow Dobey back to the precinct.
* * * *
Arnold Mercer was a tall, well-built but homely man with close-cut blond hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. His voice was comically incongruent with his appearance. Dobey was right to be concerned about the effect seeing him had on Hutch, though he kept his temper admirably in check as he sat calmly across the table from the slightly taller suspect.
“Arnold Mercer,” he said casually, as he opened the file folder in front of him. “Arnold, I’ve got a bit of bad news for you.”
“I have nothing more to say to the police.”
“You’ve talked to a lawyer, I assume?” Hutch continued flipping through the file folder’s contents, as if this were just a routine meeting.
“I don’t need a lawyer to advise me to refuse to answer any questions unless arrested.”
“Maybe this’ll be good news for you, then, Arnie. Because I’m here to let you know that you’re going to be, in fact, arrested in just a matter of minutes. Right now, the charges are aggravated assault on a police officer, vandalism—which, incidentally, Arnie, doesn’t sound like much on the surface, but the judge usually looks at photos of the damage…considers the circumstances…anyway, I digress. Let’s see. That was aggravated assault on an officer, vandalism, breaking and entering, and here’s a tasty little charge just for you—sexual assault. Bet the boys in prison are gonna be lined up in a regular little welcoming committee for you, Arnie.”
“That’s a lie!” he shouted at Hutch.
“Well, Arnie, unfortunately for you, you don’t have to go all the way to commit a sexual assault. You see, you copping a cheap feel or two while you were threatening my partner was enough—oh, did I forget to mention that the officer you worked over was my partner? And, incidentally, that was my house you messed up? Well, just so you know, you got on my turf.” Hutch slammed the folder shut and stood up suddenly, sending his chair skidding backwards. From the other side of the two-way glass, Dobey started a bit, but motioned to the uniformed officers and the chief, who had come down to watch, to leave Hutch to his ravings unless things got out of hand.
“Look, you better not have any ideas about getting rough with me. I have rights.”
“Rights?” He strode around the table and leaned down into the man’s face menacingly. “You want to tell me about your rights? Why don’t we talk about David Starsky’s rights. You remember him. The cop you shoved on the floor, kicked, beat, and insulted while you were destroying his house? Ring any bells? The same one you had so much fun threatening with all sorts of perversities?”
“Guard!” Mercer called out, soon realizing when there was no response that he was on his own with the partner of the man he’d tormented, and would have raped if not for the shortage of time. Hutch was leaning on the back of Mercer’s chair and the table, suspending his upper body above the man, but not touching him.
“Yell all you want, you rancid piece of shit, but as of this moment, your sorry ass is mine! You might not know this, but you white supremacist lunatics aren’t real popular around here. My captain just put a nice big bow on your head and gave you to me for an early Christmas present!!” Hutch watched the unease in the man’s face turn to fear, and now he was on a roll. Damn it, Starsk, you oughtta be here to see this. I never knew I could do the “bad cop” part quite this well.
“Look, I don’t know what you’re—”
“Oh don’t hand me that!” Hutch slapped the surface of the table. “My partner identified that pathetic little squeak you call a voice, and let me tell you something, that ID’s gonna stick to you like glue, and you’re going down hard.” Hutch backed away and started pacing. “Is that your hang up, Mercer? That squeaky little voice? Is that why you have to find a way to prove you’re a man? Does brutalizing someone get you off?”
Hutch worked hard at pulling back his anger. More spouting off and he was going to lose his momentum. “As I see it, asshole, you’ve got two choices. You can plan on doin’ the old bone dance with a bunch of guys in the state pen who are a whole lot bigger and a whole lot lonelier than you for a very long time—gettin’ somebody who already likes other men is gonna be just like candy at Christmas for them—or…you can shorten your stay at the men’s club by identifying your nasty little friends.”
“You don’t have any proof. A voice ID—”
“From a veteran detective who had plenty of time to hear it while you were leaning over him as he lay on the floor, detailing what you were going to do to him? It’s not just gonna convict you, it’s gonna bury you.”
“So supposing I knew anything about any of this stuff, what could you do for me?”
“I don’t give guarantees, Mercer. But we might be able to work out a reduction of some charges with the DA, or perhaps recommend some sentencing adjustments for your cooperation. See, you’re dead shit in the water right now. We’ve got you cold, and we don’t owe you nothin’, so you’re goin’ down. The only question is how far and for how long. That part’s up to you. And you better make up your mind because if we nailed you, we’ll get the rest of your little friends any time now, and the offer’ll be withdrawn.”
“I need to think!” he snapped back at Hutch.
“Don’t hurt yourself. I’ll be back in ten minutes. You better think real hard.” Hutch left with a vibrating slam of the door.
“I think he’s sweatin’,” Dobey said, with a proud smile. “Nice work in there, Hutchinson. You had him on the run.”
“I wanted to kill him,” Hutch muttered under his breath. “Perverted fucker.”
“Well,” Jim entered the area where Hutch and Dobey were watching the prisoner wring his hands, “any luck?”
“We’re letting him simmer a little.” Dobey grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Then Hutch is going back in there to dangle the carrot one last time. Any leads on the others?”
“Not a thing. The only reason we got this one is the voice. I remembered Starsky mentioning what a weird, squeaky voice the pervert had. When we questioned this guy—started out routine—I just leaned real hard on him because of the voice.”
“Let’s hope the bluff worked then and he gives. By the way, Hutch—the chief was in here while you were questioning Mercer. I think I actually saw him smile. He was enjoying the show.”
“Guess I didn’t go over the line, then, huh?” Hutch was riveted to watching his quarry in the interrogation room, wishing for a few unsupervised moments and a blunt object…
“Almost, but not enough to hang yourself.”
“So this weirdo is a student at Radnor College?”
“Yep. And he was a rabble rouser at Mr. Eisenman’s speech,” Jim explained. “Eisenman is the guy they stole the picture from.”
“Any ties at all back to Shoemacher?” Hutch asked.
“None we’ve been able to find. That doesn’t mean they don’t know each other.”
“So Mercer’s all we’ve got?”
“For the moment. So if he fingers his pals, we’re home free,” Jim recapped with a hopeful smile.
* * * *
Starsky watched a school bus unloading up the street, and the children dispersing in various directions. Huggy shifted again in his lawn chair, seeming to be restless at the inactivity of the afternoon. Short of going into the house to get them each a beer, he hadn’t done much of anything but just sit, talk and occasionally watch the porch work.
“Hutch oughtta be home pretty soon. I’ll be okay if you want to get back to The Pits.”
“Diane probably could use a little help with set up for dinner hour.” Huggy stood up and stretched. “You sure you’re okay here, Starsky?”
“I’m sure. I really am not immobile, Hug. I’m just supposed to take it easy for a few days, which is what I’m doing. I won’t run up and down the stairs or anything until Hutch gets back.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. I’ve already been threatened to stay put.”
“Okay then. You take care.” Huggy started across the front yard to the six cement steps that led from the higher ground upon which the houses sat to the sidewalk in front of them.
“Thanks, Hug.” Starsky waved him off and took the last swallow of his beer. He was getting hungry again, and figured Hutch would be due home soon, hopefully with good news…and take-outs.
“Afternoon!” A voice called from the sidewalk. A husky man with receding brown hair, dressed in jeans and a workshirt made his way up the steps and across the lawn to where Starsky sat.
“Afternoon. What can I do for ya?” Starsky asked, setting his sunglasses on top of his head to have eye contact with the man.
“You must be Detective Starkey.”
“Starsky. Yeah, that’s me.”
“Mel Pomeroy. I’m your neighbor next door.” He held out a hand, and Starsky hesitated a little and then extended his bruised right hand. The other man gave it only light pressure. “I’m real sorry about what happened.”
“Thanks. Have a seat—and call me Dave,” Starsky offered, gesturing at the empty lawn chair. He knew his story had made it to the newspaper, despite the best efforts to suppress it. He still didn’t relish filling in the blanks for the neighbors’ morbid curiosity.
“I sure hope this isn’t going to drive you out of here. I was pretty happy to hear we had a couple of cops for neighbors.”
“We don’t have any plans to move anytime soon. We both like this place.”
“Well, my wife’s been bitching for about five years straight about the yard over here. She was real happy that day she saw you out there tearin’ the weeds outta the garden.”
“Oh, yeah. I had plans for that garden. May have to wait ’til spring now. I don’t think I’ll be digging too many holes for awhile. They’re gonna put in a new lawn, but that’ll probably happen in the spring too. I want to landscape the place first, and my partner and I’ll be doing that work ourselves.”
“Old Mr. Oliver wasn’t too well for the last several years he was here on his own. This place used to be one of the swankiest on the block. He just let it go after his wife died. Elaine was a real sweet old lady.”
“You’ve been here a long time then, huh? Hey—would you like a beer or anything?”
“Nah, don’t go to any trouble on my account.”
“No trouble. You’ll have to get it,” Starsky said, smiling a little. He had been ordered to stay in the chair, and his throbbing body had no plans to disobey that directive. “There’s beer in the fridge, and the side door should be unlocked.”
“Be right back, then.” Mel headed up the driveway and then returned shortly with two beers in hand.
Starsky hadn’t realized that there were even bruises on his legs showing under the shorts he wore, but he shrugged it off, figuring he looked pummeled enough in the face that a few scattered bruises elsewhere certainly weren’t shocking.
“Thanks.” He took one of the beers from Mel.
“Hey, it’s your beer,” Mel reminded good-naturedly. “I just got off work an hour ago. First shift.”
“Where do you work?”
“The paper factory downtown.”
“Oh yeah. We drive by that just about everyday.”
“The house belonged to my wife’s parents. We moved in after they took a condo in Palm Springs. Most of these old places have passed on in the same families. Don’t see that kinda continuity too often anymore.”
“Not really. So you knew the Olivers?”
“Oh, yes. We’ve lived here about fifteen years. Old Harry was about 85, I think, when he died last year. Elaine was 70 when she died. Cancer.”
“Too bad. Did you know any of the kids?”
“Nah. I saw the youngest a time or two when he came back for Christmas. Don’t know why he bothered, arrogant little bastard. He was in law school, I think. Harry busted his ass payin’ for those spoiled brats to go through college…you can see where it got him.”
“How many kids did he have? I think it was the arrogant lawyer we dealt with.”
“Four. Two boys, two girls. None of them worth squat to their parents. The girls married big shots, moved away. One’s in New Hampshire, another one’s in Santa Rosa—you’d think she was in China. Never see any sign of her. One of the boys died in a car crash when he was a teenager—Danny. His younger brother, Craig, is the lawyer.”
“Amazing. You have four kids…you’d think one or two’d be around anyway.”
“Look, I think we owe you an apology.”
“Who? What for?”
“We have a neighborhood watch here. Only problem is, nobody’s been real committed to it since, until the other night, nothin’ really serious has happened here. We rotate duty, obviously, and nobody took Saturday night.”
“Well, I don’t know as you’d’a been able to stop it anyway. Part of it’s my own damn fault. I left the side door unlocked. My partner was out for the evening, and since that dumb lock used to stick, I just left it unlocked for him. I figured if he wasn’t home before I turned in for the night, I’d lock up. They showed up about 9:30.”
“I still can’t believe no one heard anything.”
“The houses are pretty far apart, and with the shades drawn—plus, a couple of ’em had guns, so my yelling options were a little limited.”
“Maybe you and your partner could talk to our watch group—you know, give us some pointers.”
“We’d be glad to. It’d be nice to get involved in something here. We’ve both always rented—so we’re sort of ready to do the whole ‘homeowner’ thing.”
“Houses are a good investment.” Mel nodded approvingly. “Both bachelors, eh?”
“Yeah,” Starsky responded, laughing a little. “Ain’t for lack of tryin’. We’ve both had a couple of close calls—Hutch was married once.”
“Cops’ lives are rough on marriages—my brother-in-law’s a cop in San Diego. Been divorced three times.”
“Takes a very special woman, and a lot of commitment to the relationship.” Starsky smiled a little evilly. “‘Course bein’ single ain’t all bad either.”
“Too true,” Mel agreed, tipping his beer quite high. It was obvious he had drained most of the bottle. “This’ll look good with the new porch out front.”
“We’ve gotta stop fighting over the paint color pretty soon.”
“What’re the choices?”
“Hutch wants white, I want blue or yellow.”
“My wife thinks it oughtta be peach with white trim.”
“Oh God.” Starsky rolled his eyes. “That’d look real nice with the pink one next door. Hutch and I can pose out front in our tutus.” Mel laughed from the belly, shaking in his lawn chair.
“Guess you were hopin’ for somethin’ a little less lady-like, eh?”
“Blue. I just see blue. Hutch wants white—I don’t want it to match Schoemacher’s place out back.”
“That shithead. Was he in on this?”
“It’s still under investigation.”
“His is the only house in the neighborhood that everyone rewards their kids for vandalizing at Halloween.” That time, Starsky was the one who laughed, holding onto his side.
“Oh, man. Only hurts when I laugh.” He was still grinning from ear to ear.
“My wife makes a mean goulash. She wanted to send some over—I wanted to make sure you wanted it. You know, sometimes people don’t like food shoved at ’em if they don’t like it.”
“I love goulash. Hey, she can feed us anytime. Only thing is, we’re kinda like strays—feed us once and we keep coming back.”
“I’ll go get it out of the ‘fridge. She also wondered if you liked chocolate chip cookies,” he added, standing.
“You treat that lady right, or I think I’ll marry her.”
Mel just laughed as he started walking back toward his own house.
“You could put it on the counter in the kitchen if you would—wow, that’s really great. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Is she home? I’d like to meet her too.”
“She’s probably at her bridge club. Usually doesn’t get home until dinner time. Don’t worry. You’ll meet her soon enough.”
“Okay. Thanks again, Mel.”
“Be right back.” Mel headed back to the sidewalk and toward his house. After being ignored by most of the neighbors and taunted by one, it was a nice feeling to be welcomed.
* * * *
Hutch pulled into the driveway about the time Mel was returning with a foil-covered bowl and a plate of cookies covered in plastic wrap. Assuming a man carrying food was probably not a Nazi, he greeted the man pleasantly and without suspicion.
“Ken Hutchinson,” Hutch extended a hand to shake, but then ended up taking the teetering top plate off the bowl and holding the door for the unexpected visitor.
“Mel Pomeroy. I’m your neighbor next door. I was just out there talkin’ with Dave, and he seemed to like the idea of tryin’ some of my wife’s cooking.”
“That’s one thing Starsky’s real agreeable about—food. Thanks very much.” Hutch set the cookies on the counter next to the bowl.
“She taped cooking instructions on top of the foil on the bowl—just needs a re-heat.”
“Great. Thanks again.”
“I gotta get goin’. We’re bowling tonight, so I’m fixin’ dinner to be ready when Sally gets home.”
“Good luck on the bowling.”
“Thanks. We’re doin’ pretty well so far.”
“Great. See you later.” Hutch watched him head back over toward his house, and then went out in the front to find his partner.
“Hey—you met Mel?”
“Yeah. Seems like a great guy. Food smelled good too.” Hutch cast an eye around. “Where’s Huggy?”
“He went back to The Pits to help Diane get set up for dinner. I figured you’d be home soon so I told him to go ahead. Tell me what happened.”
“Oh, not much, really.” Hutch sat down in the other lawn chair. “I was a little later than expected because…we made four arrests this afternoon.”
“What?!” Starsky’s eyes popped, and if moving hadn’t been such an effort, he’d have jumped out of his chair.
“The turkey with the squeaky voice sure can sing well. Hung his three buddies out to dry. I worked with Nedloe, Elliot, and Dobey on questioning ’em. All but one confessed—they want to make deals—cop pleas if they can. The one holding out has been sold out three times over, so it’s just a matter of time for him.” Hutch was grinning widely. “We got ’em, partner.”
“What I wouldn’t give to have a few minutes…”
“I had a few of those fantasies myself. I did have a chance to have some fun with Mercer. I think it might just have been my most brilliant performance.”
“Your talent matched only by your humility.” Starsky snorted a little laugh.
“Ready to go inside?”
“Yeah. I think the work crew is sick of me starin’ at ’em all day.”
“Too bad. We’re payin’ them enough to work and entertain you in their spare time. They’re lucky we didn’t ask for a soft shoe routine.”
“With straw hats and canes.”
“GRAY!!” Mel’s voice boomed from the sidewalk as he was rushing toward their house. “GRAY!!”
“What?” Starsky was on his feet by now, and so was Hutch.
“Your house—you want blue,” he pointed at Hutch, “and you want white—”
“No, I want blue, he wants white,” Starsky corrected.
“Whatever—gray’s a compromise color.” Mel was a little out of breath, but seemed very pleased with himself. Both had to admit the idea had some merit.
“I like it.” Starsky was nodding toward the house. “White trim?”
“Works for me,” Hutch also was looking toward the house, then back at his partner and their neighbor.
“You must wanna see paint on this place real bad, Mel,” Starsky said, smiling.
“Well, yeah, can’t deny that.” He chuckled a little.
“Damn good idea. I think we’ll paint it gray,” Starsky concluded, and Hutch nodded his approval. “Thanks, Mel.”
“Anytime. I think my ribs’re burnin’. I better get back.” He hurried back toward his house again.
“Think he’s crazy?” Hutch asked.
“Nah. I think he’s just happy to have neighbors with heartbeats.”
“Could be,” Hutch said with a little laugh. “Gray. I think that’ll look nice.”
“Me too.”
“Feeling better, pal?” Hutch lightly put an arm around Starsky’s shoulders as they wandered up toward the house.
“Yeah, I do. Coupla beers didn’t hurt, either.”
“Beer and pain pills. That’s smart.”
“I don’t take those until bedtime. I didn’t take any this afternoon, or I’d’a been asleep all day long.” Starsky made his slow ascent up the three steps into the kitchen and sat in a chair there while Hutch pored over the goulash instructions, then set the bowl in the oven and turned it on.
“Dobey thinks we can get some nice tidy convictions on those guys. If we’re lucky, it won’t go to trial.”
“I don’t like to think of them gettin’ off too easy.”
“Most of ’em hadn’t been caught at something like this before. They were singing like canaries. I don’t think we’ll have to do much in the line of plea bargaining.”
“What charge is getting shaved off for Mercer?” Starsky waited while Hutch hesitated.
“The sexual assault charge.”
“Terrific,” Starsky grumbled.
“The DA felt that would add the least to the sentence anyway, since it was only at the lowest level as far as the legal system is concerned. Look, it wasn’t one I gave up on easily, but we had to give him something that sounded like he was getting a lot but really didn’t matter that much in terms of the time he’ll end up serving. Unfortunately, that charge fit the bill.” Hutch looked at his partner’s somewhat defeated expression. “I’m not saying that ‘nothing happened,’ but that’s—”
“What the DA is saying.”
“Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.” Hutch watched as Starsky shook his head.
“It makes sense from a strategic standpoint. I just…wouldn’t have talked about it to Nedloe and Elliot of it wasn’t going to be used anyway… Plus I wanted to think he was gonna be known for the dirty, perverted son of a bitch that he is.”
“Don’t worry about that. Word travels fast on the prison grapevines,” Hutch smirked a little as he washed his hands and then pulled vegetables out of the refrigerator to start working on the salad. “And if we hadn’t had it to bargain with, we might have never busted the others. So it wasn’t for nothing.”
“Give me the tomatoes and a knife. Maybe I can do something useful over here.”
“Sure. Just pretend the tomato is Mercer.” Hutch set the two fat tomatoes, a plate and a knife in front of Starsky. “Wash your hands.”
“Yes, Ma.” Starsky got up and followed orders. He was soon back at the table, slicing while Hutch tore up the lettuce. The smell of goulash was filling the kitchen. “Hutch?”
“Yeah?”
“You did real good with Mercer. Thanks for goin’ after him like that.”
“I wish it was an ideal solution.”
“He’s goin’ to the pen, his nasty little freak friends are goin’ with him, and there probably won’t be a trial—which’ll save me, along with a bunch of Jews and a bunch of neo-Nazis who’d probably decide to stand around waving picket signs—a whole lot of trouble.”
CHAPTER 7
I lost my faith,
You gave it back to me,
You said no star was out of reach,
You stood by me and I stood tall…
During the next several days, Starsky continued to heal and the porch continued to materialize, and Hutch spent many of his hours at the precinct following through on the case against Starsky’s attackers. His partner, recuperating but still under doctor’s orders to stay away from work, found himself increasingly attracted to rooting through cartons and storage chests in the attic. The treasures of someone else’s lifetime were fascinating, and he stumbled across more than one antique book or magazine that was worth a few laughs in otherwise boring days.
The one man among the four charged with the assault on Starsky who was “holding out” finally asked to meet with Hutch almost a week following his arrest. The men had been arraigned, and in an almost unprecedented move in an assault case, the judge had denied bail, citing the sadism and wantonness of the crime and concerns for the safety of the victim, who was still recovering under a doctor’s care. He also added that flight risk should be considered high, since two of the men were college students who resided in other states, and neither of the other two owned any property in the area, and also had prior records. It was being appealed, but had held up so far.
Wendell Norton wasn’t exactly the visual image of a thug. He was tall and muscular, and his sandy hair was neatly and professionally styled, just brushing his collar. He was soft-spoken and articulate, and surprisingly well-mannered. A second-year student at Radnor, majoring in Political Science, Norton was a 24-year-old sophomore who had taken a few years off between high school and college to travel through Europe. His expenses had been paid by his overly-benevolent family. During his travels, he had managed to land himself in jail in Germany, leading his family into a costly and time-consuming ordeal to extricate him from what ended up being a bar-brawling charge. An angry father had dragged him home, enrolled him in the very humble community college and reduced him to living in a one-room apartment on a meager allowance from the family.
“You wanted to see me.” Hutch sat across the interrogation room table from the other man. He nodded toward the stenographer who had accompanied him to start recording the conversation. “You have something to say?”
“I think it would be foolish at this point for me to deny that I was involved in this situation.”
“That’s probably the understatement of the year, Norton. According to your pals, you’re the ring-leader.”
“I figured as much.” Norton leaned back in his chair and shook his head, smiling slightly. “I was an organizer—but not the mastermind of the whole thing. I know I’m gonna take a fall for this, but I’m not going alone. The jerk who had the idea in the first place is going with me, if I have anything to say about it.”
“And that would be?” Hutch was already annoyed by this particular man, probably because he was sitting there, trying to behave like this was some high-level meeting with his attorney, his nose still somewhat in the air. Rich little shit with an attitude way beyond adjusting, Hutch thought to himself.
“A guy named Curtis.”
“Curtis? First name or last name?”
“Only name. He introduced himself as ‘Curtis.’ That was it.”
“Tell me about Curtis.” Hutch leaned back in the chair.
“I was in a pub with Arnold and Karl,” he referred to Mercer and another of the attackers, “and we were talking about one of our classes. Arnold is a part-time student, and Karl is full-time like me. We’re all poli sci majors. Anyhow, the professor had been talking about the Holocaust, and Hitler’s politics, and that’s always a hot subject. Watch a classroom come alive when you say you thought Hitler was a great leader.” His self-satisfied smirk was infuriating.
“Get to the point. Where was this ‘pub’?”
“Gulliver’s. It’s walking distance from the campus. Anyway, we were talking about Hitler and the Jews, and this guy just walks up to our table and asks if he can sit with us. We were a little puzzled why he wanted to, but we said okay, and he sat down.”
“Describe him.” Hutch had his notepad open now, and was jotting a few notes here and there.
“He was probably 5’10” or so, average build. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots, a plaid shirt of some sort and a denim jacket. He had a dark blue baseball cap on and sunglasses.”
“In a bar?”
“Well, yeah, that’s part of why we let him sit there. We figured he was a little fruity, and it might be good for a laugh or two. He also had a mustache—dark brown, and I think his hair was the same color. A little of it stuck out under the cap.”
“So what did he want with you?”
“He said his name was Curtis, and that he had overheard part of our conversation. He asked if we were actively involved in our politics. We were a little thrown by that—I mean, we were wondering if he was some kind of undercover cop or some kind of government watchdog. Arnold said right away that he was, and that he’d stand up for his beliefs any day—like he took what this Curtis guy said as some kind of ‘practice what you preach’ challenge.”
“What did Curtis say to that?”
“He said he had a job for four guys—he said he figured it would take that many to do it right. He also said we might get our hands dirty, but we ought to like the work. Then he promised us each ten grand to do it.”
“Ten thousand dollars? Just like that? To three guys he just met?”
“Yeah. We thought it was pretty far out, but hey, for ten grand, I’ll hear anybody out once. So we said, yeah, we might be interested. He said he had this Jew he wanted us to take care of for him. We all thought he meant kill him, and so Karl and I right away started objecting to that—neither one of us wanted to have any bodies to bury. Arnold…I don’t know but what he wouldn’t have gone along with it. But that’s beside the point. Curtis said we weren’t going to kill anybody. He said there was this Jew that he wanted us to ‘teach a lesson’—mess him up, mess up his place. The only condition was that Curtis wanted to come along and watch. He didn’t want to participate in any way—just watch.”
“So you agreed to do it?”
“Look, I’ve never done anything like this in my life. I’ve been involved in the neo-Nazi movement since I was in junior high. My uncle introduced me to it, and I’ve been active as I could ever since. I find a lot of value in Hitler’s concept of a master race—”
“I don’t want your resume.”
“What is your big crusade, Detective? I mean, you’re the perfect Aryan type. Wouldn’t you find this world a little more appealing if positions of power and authority were held by others like yourself? If you weren’t losing job advancement to blacks and Chicanos and if Jews weren’t cornering the retail markets and jacking prices up out of your reach?”
“Listen, in case word hasn’t traveled back to you through the jailhouse grapevine, the detective you messed with is my partner, and my best friend. So no, I don’t think my life would be richer if Jews were oppressed. I think my life would be a damn sight poorer if that were the case. And I’m not here to discuss politics with you or whether or not I fit into some physical category by some accident of genetics. You said you were ready to talk. So I’m listening.”
“What I initially started to say was that I have always supported the neo-Nazi movement, have attended rallies, have made contacts within a certain high-profile white supremacy group…but I haven’t ever committed a violent crime. In theory, I agree with the master race idea, and I want to continue to work for white supremacy. But I never actually thought too much about the violent side of it. I know it exists, but I never saw it in action until this whole situation.”
“So what’s your point?”
“I’m getting the rap as the leader, and all I did was put some structure into the thing so we could get it done without getting caught, and I provided the van we used. I never beat that guy, and I sure as hell didn’t ask for a turn with him upstairs.”
“Okay, slow down and back up. Let’s just follow the chain of events here in some logical order. You made the deal with Curtis to do the job. Then what happened?”
“He had a photo of the guy—said his name was Starsky, that he was a cop, gave us his address. Arnold liked the photo. He asked if when we were finished doing the job Curtis wanted done, if he could have a little ‘quality time’ with him.”
“Arnold’s gay?”
“He goes both ways, I think. I know he had a girlfriend for awhile, but he slapped her around once too often and she dumped him. I think he gets off on violence more than he does on who he’s with, if that makes any sense.”
“In a perverted sort of way, I suppose. So Arnold asked Curtis if he could rape my partner, is that what you’re telling me?” Hutch felt his blood turn cold. His stomach was in a knot. He wondered if the sweat he felt on his forehead was visible.
“Not in so many words, but that’s what he had in mind. Curtis laughed. He seemed to think it was pretty funny, and he said sure, that Arnold could do whatever he wanted to him, as long as he didn’t kill him. That was a big stipulation—that this Starsky guy be left alive.”
Hutch was trying to process the mental picture of four guys around the table in a bar, passing Starsky’s picture back and forth, laughing about what horrible way they were going assault him as if it was just another Saturday night recreation. He fought the wave of nausea valiantly, and finally won.
“So where the hell is Curtis and why are you the only one who seems to remember this guy?”
“Because he promised to pay us off big when we got out of prison if anything went wrong and we had to take a fall for this. I don’t care about that anymore. I just know I’m going down hard and I want him with me when I do.”
“What arrangements exactly did you make? And when did Marv Tyson get involved?” Hutch referred to the fourth man, who had not been present at the bar meeting with the mysterious “Curtis.”
“He gave us the address, like I said, and said we should go there the next night. We met him on a Friday night, the night before we did it. Then, right there in the bar, he calmly pulls out this big envelope and counts out two grand for each one of us, and says we’ll get the balance when the job’s done. We were floored. Karl and I thought about bolting with that money, but something told us that this Curtis guy would track us down if we pulled that. Anyhow, he told us to show up at that address, and he’d meet us there. He said that Starsky’s partner would be gone, and he’d be there alone.”
“And you found Tyson on your own?”
“Yeah. He was a friend of Arnold’s—so actually, Arnold found him.” Norton took a deep breath and ran his hand back through his well-coifed hair. He looked more like a Ken doll than a Nazi. Jailhouse Ken, Hutch thought, recalling the ridiculous names the dolls sometimes got, having bought a few for Lisa Graham as she progressed from baby dolls to fashion dolls.
“How did you end up the organizer?”
“I offered to use my van—it’s all black, real inconspicuous at night. I also mapped it out along with Arnold—he was the idea person, but I was the timekeeper. I mean, if this Starsky guy lived with somebody and they could come home at some point, we couldn’t just camp out there all night. Curtis told us to wear the black outfits and ski masks. Anyway, I kept nudging things along when they tended to linger on one thing too long. I mean, Arnold must’ve spent forty-five minutes just trying to get that guy to lick his boots. I told him to back off when he kicked him in the stomach that one time. I was afraid he was going to end up killing him by accident.”
“Arnold was essentially the leader once you got in then?”
“Yes. Karl and Marv held the guy and Arnold worked him over most of the time. When he was settled down enough from slapping him around, I tied his wrists. He was like a wild animal when we got a hold of him. It took four of us just to settle him down, and then he was still wiggling a lot until Arnold got done with him. Once he was tied up, Karl and Marv still stayed on either side. They went through all their games with him—with the pictures, breaking up the house, the whole boot-licking thing. I really got scared when they shoved him down and started kicking. I was afraid they’d kill him, so I called it off—I told them we weren’t supposed to kill him. The way Marv was beating him with this…thing—I think it was like a riding crop but it seemed bigger—I figured if the kicking didn’t kill him, they’d probably kill him because he couldn’t get up. I think that’s when I got really turned off. I mean, they’d already worked him over and torn up the house. I thought it was time to clear out.”
“So you were just an innocent bystander, watching the action?”
“No. I smashed up some things, and I helped tie him up, but I didn’t beat him.”
“Not too pretty, your doctrine, when you see it in action huh?”
“It was…well, it was just that the guy honestly couldn’t move. I mean, up till then it had been like a game—breaking his will—because you could let him have it and he’d get back up and spit in Arnold’s face. He was the toughest SOB I ever saw. But after they’d kicked him, and they were yelling at him to get up, from where I was standing, I could see he was trying. He just couldn’t do it. Then Arnold grabbed him by the hair and pulled, and when I saw he actually pulled some of the guy’s hair out, I knew he was really unable to move, because usually just your reflexes would make you move with your hair, or at least fight having it pulled like that.”
“How was he supposed to get up with his wrists and ankles tied together when you had him laid out on the floor?”
“Just on his knees. We had him on his knees most of the time.”
“That’s nice.” Hutch took a moment to regroup his thoughts. He didn’t know how much he could stand of this story. He’d heard it before from Starsky, but not with the coldness of the assailant. He’d heard the pain and the fear and the degradation…and he’d held his partner while he trembled and sobbed with the memories of what they’d done, and what they’d threatened. He’d watched him suffer through the aftermath of the beating, and he’d watched that indomitable spirit put itself back together and rise above it somehow… Even on his knees, he was head and shoulders above you, you sick bastard, Hutch thought.
“He seemed to pass out a couple of times, and I was afraid he was dead. I checked his pulse, and it was okay. Curtis was just standing in the corner, watching everything—and he’d snicker once in awhile at something Arnold did. Arnold told me not to untie his ankles until we got upstairs. He brought the guy—”
“Starsky. He is a human being with a name.”
“He brought Starsky around, and got real close to his face and started talking to him, sort of stroking at him. It made me retch a little, because it sounded like you’d talk to some woman you were seducing. He was all hunched over him, so we couldn’t see or hear real well what was going on, but the guy—Starsky—was wriggling around, trying to get away from him. When Arnold stood up, he asked for help taking him upstairs. Curtis asked him why up there, and Arnold said, like it was a big joke, ‘ain’t you got no decency?’
“Anyway, Marv helped drag him up there, and Karl, Curtis and I followed them. Starsky was saying something, but I couldn’t hear it. He wasn’t playin’ with a real full deck by then, I don’t think, because he had been sort of passed out for awhile. But he knew what was goin’ on, because he started trying to wiggle around again upstairs. He wouldn’t tell Arnold which room was his—I guess that was something Arnold was needling him about. Anyway, they dropped him in the hall, and Arnold asked if anyone else wanted a turn when he was done.”
“Starsky was conscious while this was going on?”
“Oh, yeah. But he must’ve been in hard shape because Arnold untied his wrists and brought his arms around front and tied them together again and he didn’t fight to get away. I think he was drifting in and out.”
Hutch took a deep breath and tried to bolster himself. Starsky hadn’t mentioned hearing this exchange where he was being offered up for grabs to anyone who wanted it, but he had to have heard it.
“So who asked for a turn?” Hutch asked after swallowing hard.
“Nobody. None of us go that way. So Arnold started making this big production out of taking Starsky’s belt off—I mean, I figured since he’d changed the way Starsky was tied up, he was going to use it to restrain him somehow, probably to the railing, but Arnold was making the most of the moment. Marv and Karl said they’d hold his legs down. That’s when I said we should check the time. It was like that was the first time it dawned on Curtis to check it, and he agreed that we should get out. It was 11:30, and we’d been there almost two hours.”
Norton shifted a little nervously in his chair. “It wasn’t the time that was bothering me. I guess I didn’t want to see them do that. I mean, they’d beaten the hell out of him, called him every name in the book—and it was somehow like a game most of the time because he was so…I don’t know…lively, I guess. He never gave up, and as long as he could still get up or talk, he kept fighting back. But after Arnold yanked his arms up, which I figured had to hurt like hell, and Marv and Karl held his legs down, and Arnold untied his ankles…I think…I’m not real sure about this, but I think he was crying. I just thought it was overkill.”
“You’re a real humanitarian, Norton.”
“Look, I’m not trying to win any popularity contests here. But the mastermind behind this was Curtis, not me. I don’t want to take the fall for more than what I did. And for whatever you think of me, I really didn’t want to see it go all the way. Plus I was worried it would kill him. I didn’t know how badly hurt he was.”
“What happened after you mentioned the time?”
“Arnold was furious. He said he was getting cheated, that this was part of the deal. Then he started telling that it wouldn’t take him long—they argued—Curtis and Arnold—a second or two. Then Curtis said the deal was off if we didn’t haul ass out of there right then. He told Marv to knock out Starsky first, so he couldn’t call for help for awhile. I think Marv hit him in the back of the head with the gun butt. Marv, Arnold and I had guns. I think Curtis did too but he didn’t draw it. So we left, us in the van, which was parked about a block up, and Curtis in some kind of dark European sedan. I think it might have been a Mercedes, but I’m not sure. It was real dark where he’d parked.”
“When’d you get paid?”
“Curtis said he’d messenger the money to us, probably in the next couple of days. We got it about three hours before Arnold was hauled in for questioning—delivered in plain envelopes, small bills, right to our door. I never saw the delivery person. They must’ve literally rung the bell and run because I only have one room in my apartment and by the time I opened the door, no one was there—just a fat envelope propped against the door frame. Eight grand, in cash, paid in full.”
“And you never had a phone number or any kind of contact information on Curtis?”
“No. And he never said why he wanted Starsky worked over either. It was pretty obvious at times that he wasn’t interested in the whole issue of white supremacy. He just seemed to enjoy the show.”
“Do you have anything to add to your statement, Mr. Norton?” Hutch asked, wanting nothing more than to run screaming out of the horrible little room…to go home and see Starsky, though he didn’t have the faintest clue what he’d say…
“That’s about it. I really…I didn’t like how it ended…we were just going to do a little damage, beat the guy up…”
“Mr. Norton, you profess to believe in the doctrines and the philosophies of Hitler. Of the Holocaust. That involved putting people in concentration camps, torturing them, subjecting them to unthinkable deaths and unheard of cruelties. Men, women, children, old people—just because they were born in the wrong place on a map or because they worshiped in the wrong type of building. You got to see it in action, and despite how atrocious this was, it was just a microcosmic view of what your brand of hate supports. So think well while you’re cooling your heels in here.” Hutch rose from his chair and headed for the door, then as an afterthought, turned to the stenographer. “It ends where he says ‘that’s about it,’” Hutch instructed. “You can review and sign the statement as soon as it’s been typed.”
* * * *
The corridor was a blur. Hutch had started out in a brisk walk, and then opened up into a run, not slowing until he’d bolted down the steps and out to his car. He drove erratically through the mid-day traffic, finally turning onto Cherry Street, then into the driveway of his house—no, finally coming home, Hutch thought, slamming on the brakes and getting out of the car, frantically working the side door lock with shaking hands. It mercifully cooperated and he was in the kitchen at last, calling for Starsky as if the house were on fire.
“Hutch? What is it?” The other was carefully making his way down the steps, though he was becoming more fluid at it every day as the injuries healed. As soon as Starsky emerged from the back stairwell, Hutch was at a loss for what to say to him, but just seeing him had seemed necessary after hearing Norton’s diatribe. “Hey, partner, come on—what’s the matter, huh?” Starsky asked gently, concerned at Hutch’s frazzled appearance and obviously overwrought state of mind.
“I’m sorry, Starsk. I…I don’t know…I just had to…” Hutch gave up on explanations and walked past Starsky to the sink, where he held onto the edge of the counter. The nausea was rising again, and his whole body seemed to contract with trying to control it.
“Just take it easy, buddy. Deep breaths,” Starsky soothed, rubbing his partner’s back slowly. “Dobey called—he was worried—he saw you run out. He told me you’d been with Norton, taking a statement. Hutch, I’m okay. It’s all over.” Starsky waited until he felt a little relaxation in his partner’s taut frame. “It’s okay for you to be upset about this too, buddy. I know that stuff’s hard to hear…hard to watch somebody go through…” He felt a little tremble in his partner that felt suspiciously like restrained tears. Starsky stopped the motion of his hand and rested it on Hutch’s shoulder. “Didn’t I blubber like an idiot all over you once we got that serum for Callendar’s plague?” Starsky backed away a little, as Hutch started laughing a bit unevenly.
“Talk about waterworks,” he mumbled, trying to pull his own under control.
“Sometimes it’s the stress letting loose, finally. Sometimes it just hurts too much to hold in anymore. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter, pal. It has to come out sometime.”
“I feel like I’m going to be sick.” Hutch dropped into a kitchen chair, and Starsky pulled another up opposite his, just a short distance away.
“Try to relax, buddy. Take a deep breath.” He placed a steadying hand on Hutch’s shoulder and watched as his partner did his best to obey the instructions. “Feelin’ better now?”
“Yeah, I guess so.” He leaned back in the chair and then looked at Starsky with a sheepish grin. “I feel like an idiot.”
“You want to tell me what brought this on?”
“It wasn’t a random hate crime, Starsk. I don’t even think the motivation had anything to do with anti-Semitism. According to Norton, some guy named Curtis hired them to do what they did, and he was the fifth man in the house that night. He wanted them to come after you specifically.”
“That personalizes the whole thing, doesn’t it?” Starsky let out a long but uneasy breath. “Any leads on Curtis?”
“Not really. Norton claims they never knew more about him than that one name, and he paid in cash.”
“How did the photo enter into things?”
“Not sure yet. The only thing is, now that you mention it, he claims they met up with Curtis on Friday before it happened, and you got the photo in the mail before that…so Curtis could be presumed to be behind that, if Norton is telling the truth, which means Curtis may have ties to Radnor.”
“Or he went there to the presentation to see who the rabble rousers were who showed up, so he’d know who to approach.”
“Possibly. And while he was there, helped himself to the photo.”
“The plot thickens.” Starsky got up slowly and poured a glass of water for Hutch.
“Thanks.” Hutch took it and swallowed a little, relieved that his stomach didn’t toss it right back at him.
“Hutch.”
“What?” He took another sip of water, and then noticed Starsky’s attention riveted to something out the kitchen window. “What is it?” He joined him, then needed no answer. The swastika flag had been removed from the window of the house behind them. “Fancy that,” Hutch said, smirking a little as he finished the glass of water.
“Do you know anything about that?”
“No. Honest. Maybe he just got nervous after being questioned.”
“Hmm.” Starsky stared at the empty window for another minute, then went to the phone. He dialed a number and waited while it rang. “Mel? Yeah, Dave Starsky here…doin’ better, thanks….oh, yeah. Hey, do you know anything about Schoemacher taking the flag down? I just looked over there—” a long pause, during which Hutch watched a decidedly evil smile curl the corners of his partner’s mouth. “That’s really great. I don’t know what to say…well, yeah, I know, but…sure….I don’t think we could tonight. Rain check?” Another considerable pause. “Okay, great. We’ll plan on it. Thanks, Mel.” Starsky hung up.
“What was that all about?”
“I just thought I’d call Mel and see if he knew anything about the flag. He said he got the neighborhood watch group together—about fifteen guys in all—and paid Schoemacher a visit, strongly suggesting he take down the flag.”
“I’m surprised he responded to that.”
“I guess they were pretty emphatic about what would happen if he refused. That’s why they didn’t want us in on it—wanted to leave the neighborhood cops out of it.” Starsky smiled a little wickedly. “Guess he’s out-numbered around here now.”
“You and Mel seem to be getting pretty tight,” Hutch said, returning to his seat at the table. Starsky came back to his own chair.
“Well, he gets home around four, and his wife often isn’t home yet, so he comes over and has a beer and shoots the breeze awhile. He said he and his son could give us a hand with the planting if we want to put in a few shrubs or at least dig out some of the old dead stuff. Whadd’ya think? He knows about the most I can do is stand in the yard and run stuff through the mulcher—he’s got one of those—but he’s still offering to help out.”
“Little, light-weight stuff,” Hutch added, smiling a little. “Hey, if they’re willing to help, I’m game to put in a couple days on it. Incidentally, what are we taking a rain check on?”
“Grilling out steaks. He invited us tonight, but I thought…well, I think we could use some peace and quiet. Besides, you still didn’t answer my question, Hutch.”
“About what?” Hutch knew fully well what Starsky was driving at, but he was stalling. He was just starting to feel a little less frazzled, and now he was supposed to bring it up again.
“What did Norton say that freaked you out? You knew what happened…” Starsky seemed to have a slight dawning himself, but he said nothing more.
“He filled in a few blanks about Arnold…makes me a hell of a lot more upset about dismissing that one supposedly minor charge.”
“Damn it. You didn’t need to hear any more about it than what you already did.”
“I didn’t know the exact timetable, what was said…”
“It was fuzzy at times for me too. I passed out after they got done kicking me, then I came around again, then I blacked out for a few minutes…I was picking up on things like bad radio reception. I know for sure there are some things I heard and saw and felt, and I know there were others that could be part of a nightmare my mind has worked up or they might have happened. I don’t know.”
“Were you clear on what happened upstairs?”
“Crystal,” Starsky replied without hesitation. “And that’s the part I didn’t want you to ever have to hear the details of, because I know how I’d feel if I were you. I got out of it without it going all the way, and for that I’m grateful, and I guess I’d rather just forget it happened. I won’t let it take this house away from us.”
“Whoever ordered this is still out there. That’s the part that bothers me most. This was personal. I’m going to call Dobey and get that unit put back on guarding the house.”
“I won’t argue with that. Hey, the doctor said I could go back on desky duty next week.”
“Oh, shit, I forgot your doctor’s appointment this morning.”
“No big deal. Huggy drove me over there. He also gave me the green light to start driving again, so I’m not housebound anymore.”
“That’s great. I’m really sorry, Starsk. I don’t know what happened…I guess I got distracted.”
“You’ve been a little busy nailing the guys who did it. That’s a good excuse in my book.”
“Curtis. I better call Minnie and tell her to start working the computer for anyone named Curtis who might have a grudge against you.”
“Or you.”
“Good point.”
* * * *
Hutch called Dobey first and apologized for his hasty departure, discussed Norton’s statement a bit, and then asked him about getting the unit back to watch the house—more specifically, Starsky. Then he was transferred to R&I, where Minnie, resident guru of the new computer system, was holed up in an alcove with an ominous-looking machine attached to a keyboard. It seemed she could find anything on anyone in that computer, provided the poor souls who had been elected to enter the information into the system had done their work accurately. There was the threat of terminals popping up on every detective’s desk someday, and the thought made Hutch’s blood run cold. Starsky, on the other hand, had spent so much time watching over Minnie’s shoulder that he was starting to put down roots there. He was fond of lecturing Hutch on the evils of slipping behind the times and technology of crime-fighting.
Minnie took down the brief information and assured Hutch she would make it top priority. Anything remotely related to Starsky’s situation seemed to rise to the top of everyone’s piles at the precinct, and it had been obvious in the speed with which the case had been brought this far.
Hutch surrendered to ordering pizza for dinner, and feeling much more settled both in mind and stomach, found himself enjoying the food in front of the TV, which they still hadn’t moved back downstairs from the library. That gave birth to another soliloquoy from Starsky on why they needed another color TV with a remote, and a video cassette machine. Starsky had been drooling over the pricey toys for a year or so, and made it quite clear that his life wasn’t going to be complete until he had one and could tape movies and ball games and all sorts of things they missed while they were at work.
Enjoying the drone of Starsky’s voice, Hutch ate his pizza, oddly unruffled by his partner’s entreaties to update their entertainment equipment. Maybe Starsky was right. They could afford it together, going in half and half. Of course, if they split up housekeeping, they’d probably end up in a custody battle over the video equipment. The little metal children of two bachelors, Hutch thought, laughing to himself.
* * * *
Since his partner had screamed for some quiet time to rejuvenate his brain and do a bit of reading, Starsky resigned himself to doing something other than staring at the TV. He was not going to take another of Hutch’s barbs that he was a slave to his remote control.
The attic was always a fruitful place to explore, so he made his way to the lumpy old easy chair he’d found up there and sat down, picking up where he left off in “sorting.” Ostensibly, he was preparing it to be finished one of these days, going through old cartons and hopefully disposing of other people’s trash. Instead, he found himself drawn into the unfolding saga of the Oliver Family.
Isaac Oliver had built the house in 1889, and he’d found not only a bible with a family history in it which detailed all this information, and even more back as far as 1870, but also photos. There were a couple of faded photos of a man, woman and two small children, all in clothing which dated them to the late 19th century. He was delighted to have found some photos taken inside the house, one featuring the ruined staircase, which he had passed on to the contractor. A picture was, indeed, worth a thousand words, and the man seemed confident he could reproduce what he saw.
Starsky had begun to feel like the lost Oliver relative, since he knew more about them than Harry Oliver’s offspring—or at least he was willing to bet he did.
The little girl in the family portraits had married and raised her family in the house, with her elderly mother living with them until her death. Isaac Oliver died relatively young in a fire at his office building. As near as Starsky could tell, the bedroom he was using had belonged to one young Oliver who died during World War I, and then to one of the Oliver girls, who met a happier end in marrying and moving away. He pieced all this together from letters, diaries, even notes jotted during decorating projects of past generations.
The Olivers were obviously great note-takers and writers, and Starsky, being a detective, was a great assembler of such fragments. Harry Oliver had begun working on a history of the family, and his nearly illegible notes were neatly gathered into a few manilla folders. Apparently, he had collected as much of this stuff as he could, hoping to reconstruct it the way Starsky was doing now. Why he felt compelled to do the old man’s geneaology/history research was beyond him, but he found it to be a fascinating, though vastly different, kind of detective work.
“Oh, that’s you up here. I thought we had rats.” Hutch was smiling as he approached the spot where Starsky sat, and took a seat on the top of an old foot locker.
“Done expanding your grey matter?” Starsky asked, not thoroughly finished perusing a photo album he’d only recently unearthed from the interior of the foot locker on which his partner sat.
“For now. Hey, it’s late. We should probably turn in.”
“I don’t have to get up early. You go ahead.”
“Starsk, you know you still need plenty of rest.”
“I don’t do anything worthwhile all day. I get plenty of rest.”
“What’s so interesting up here, anyway?”
“I’ve been getting to know the Olivers.” Starsky closed the album and leaned back in the chair a minute. “You know, it seems so weird. All this stuff—personal stuff, letters, photos—and those people, they just don’t give a damn about any of it. You know, old Harry Oliver put three kids through college, had four—one died young—a wife, a good job—all the stuff you’re supposed to do, and here it all ends. He dies by himself in a rest home and some stranger is digging through his stuff.”
“Funny how things turn out that way. You do what everyone else wants you to do, and in the end, nobody’s happy.” Hutch was staring into space almost as if he were personalizing the discussion.
“It’s like nothing goes the way you planned it anyway. Harry did everything right—he found a nice girl and got married—well, Mel says his wife was real nice—had kids, put ’em through good schools…he shoulda been enjoying kids and grandkids and one of them should be livin’ here, raising their family…instead, they just threw him aside like an old bone after they cleaned all the meat off.”
“Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. That’s always been my dad’s favorite saying. You plan everything a certain way, and it doesn’t follow the plan anyway.”
“Like my mother, for instance. My dad was supposed to be there, to raise us…they should have been growing old together, playing with their grandkids—not that Nicky and I haven’t dropped the ball pretty pathetically in that department. I mean, she has one grandson, but Nicky has yet to admit that—and he’s still dodging the paternity test, the irresponsible little weasel. Her life sure went off in a different direction.”
“For so long, I lived my life trying to please everybody. In school, I tried to please the teachers. Shit, I was so worried about pleasing them I ended up valedictorian. Of course, there was pleasing my parents, which meant not only the grades but the sports and the clubs and the whole social scene…friends like Jack Mitchell who came from ‘nice’ families. Jack…talk about the best laid plans, poor guy.” Hutch shook his head. “Then I married Vanessa, because she was from a good family, and marriage and kids was what I was supposed to do next.”
“What about college? Was that your idea or theirs?”
“Mine. I don’t regret getting an education. Of course, if I had opted not to, I would have found out in a big hurry how displeased my folks could get. They expected it.”
“I’ve never done anything I was supposed to do, I guess.” Starsky laid the photo album aside. “I drove my teachers crazy, blew off my classes in high school—which drove Aunt Rosie and Uncle Al crazy. I think they thought they’d signed up to help raise the antichrist once I got here. ‘Course it all backfired on me because my grades were too low to get any scholarships to college. I asked. It’s funny, but when it dawned on me that high school was gonna end and I was going to be out in the world in a few months, I started getting interested in what was coming next. After I messed around with a bunch of dead-end odd jobs, I finally got serious and decided to try the Academy.”
“I knew you’d worked odd jobs first—kind of deciding what you wanted to do. I didn’t know you wanted to go to college.”
“Yeah, well, I did what I wanted—played it cool, which meant not being a ‘brain’ or a ‘nerd’ in high school—and it still didn’t work out in the end. I guess that saying’s right. Doesn’t matter what, or how, you plan. It doesn’t guarantee you anything.”
“At a point I got sick of trying to please everyone. Everyone was pleased except me. After college, instead of law school, I signed up for the Academy.”
“You told me your dad’s reaction to that one.” Starsky laughed. This was kind of an old discussion, but he didn’t mind revisiting old ground again. It was much friendlier territory than more current issues they’d had to face.
“‘Fine, Ken, why don’t you just flush a four-year education down the john.’” Hutch shook his head and smiled. “Maybe I married Vanessa to get back in their good graces. Maybe it isn’t all her fault it didn’t work out. I never liked not pleasing my family, being on the outs with them. At least they felt I was still planning on a ‘respectable’ life—and of course, there was always the chance of my ending up police commissioner or something.”
“Your parents seemed so nice when I met them—like they’d be real supportive.”
“My parents were good to me. They both love me, I’m not arguing with that. They just have ideas of what a successful, respectable life involves, and being a cop wasn’t part of that picture. Neither was being a 35-year-old bachelor with no kids.”
“Yeah. Ma tries to be real supportive of everything I do, but she’s disappointed, I know. She wanted grandchildren real bad. I’m still tryin’, but I think she’s losin’ hope.”
“The schedule’s tough on a marriage. It was tough on Vanessa, and then on top of it, I don’t think we were ever deeply in love. It hurt like hell to get dumped the way she dumped me, but looking back, I don’t think we were meant to last forever. But Sandra…she understood it, and it was worth the effort to make time for each other…”
“How about Cecile? You never did tell me how that went.”
“Starsk, I—”
“Hey, you goin’ out with her’s got nothin’ to do with what happened to me. I wanna know how it went.”
“It went…okay,” Hutch said with a smile, lending a very positive connotation to a somewhat lackluster word. “She’s smart, funny—we’ve got a lot in common. I just don’t think I’m ready yet. I think I will be someday, but it’s like there’s something dead in there I just can’t revive.”
“I know. But it never hurts to have a few attractive…” he cleared his throat, “friends.” They shared a little snicker over that concept, then Starsky became more serious again. “Are you glad you broke away, became a cop?”
“No regrets there.”
“None?”
“No. See, during my stint in the academy, and then starting out as a cop, I had one of the most liberating experiences of my entire life. For the very first time, I met someone I didn’t have to work hard to please. Someone who was pleased with me just because…I was there, I was me.” Hutch paused, as if reflecting. “That was a whole new experience. And maybe that’s when I learned what it meant to make a friend—to form the right kind of relationships—not present myself and then try like hell to be what that person wanted, but to just…be…me, and let them take it or leave it.”
“If they don’t take it, it’s their loss, buddy,” Starsky responded, smiling warmly.
“That’s what I mean, partner. You were always pleased with me, even when you had reasons not to be. I guess that’s what made me realize that if I was working that hard—be it with Vanessa, or my folks, or anyone else—to stay in their good graces, maybe it wasn’t worth being there…that maybe I was building my relationships on something artificial, something unimportant.”
“I think, if it’s real—whatever kind of relationship it is—if the foundation of it is strong, and real—it’s like having a home you can come back to but you’re still free to leave it, to go out and do something so completely outside of what you think that person might like or approve of, and it doesn’t matter…they don’t judge you.”
Hutch picked up the photo album, flipping through the pages.
“Poor old Harry lived the ideal life, just the way he was supposed to, and look where it got him. Their love stifled and killed him.”
“He wrote in his notes—he was assembling a family history, and he had a foreword all put together. He wrote that he always wanted to travel, but he tells about all the family stuff that got in the way, but he doesn’t sound bitter—it’s not like he’s saying he resents it, just that it stopped him from ever doing any of that. Made me kind of glad I stopped waiting for everything to be the way it was supposed to be and just started living my life. Buyin’ this house…it was a great idea, I think.”
“Me too, pal.” Hutch stood up. “So would getting some sleep. Come on. You need your beauty sleep—very badly,” Hutch needled.
“Hey, my face is almost back to normal.”
“Yeah, your version of normal, anyway,” Hutch kept teasing, descending the stairs as Starsky pulled the cord and turned out the overhead light.
“Wendy likes my version pretty well.”
“Wendy?”
“You think the only person who visits me when I’m here alone is Mel?” Starsky shot back, grinning.
CHAPTER 8
You were my strength when I was weak…
Starsky returned to desk duty the next week, and was surprisingly anxious to wade through paperwork on the Bridegroom case. He seemed to pick up on the fact that it was in serious danger of slipping to a back burner, with media attention dying down and Hutch’s passions directed at the search for “Curtis” and the sentencing arrangements for the rest of his hired guns. Starsky was certainly more than mildly concerned with the progress of that investigation, but if the truth be told, he had no objections to letting his partner handle it. He made no complaint about being relegated to sitting at his desk and pushing papers. That seemed an odd reaction from Starsky, but then Hutch still felt that there was a part of his partner’s spirit that hadn’t quite made it back yet from all he’d been through that night.
Starsky couldn’t really find fault with anything that Nedloe, Elliot, Farver, or Kennedy had done in their leadership of the task force. All four were sharp, dedicated detectives. The only objection he had to any of it was the establishment of a “tip line,” which had done nothing more than encourage every lunatic and professional confessor on the West Coast to call them. That, in turn, generated reams of additional forms and paperwork, none of which would ultimately lead anywhere. Still, if he were going to take over the paperwork, he felt obligated to review everything.
He was relieved when the phone on his desk rang. He hoped it would be a mildly interesting diversion, even if it only turned out to be Bill in the evidence room with a new dirty limerick.
“Starsky.”
“Dave? Mel. Sorry to track you down at work, but I got a once in a lifetime opportunity for you.”
“Sounds promising,” Starsky replied, smiling. “What is it?”
“Well, I’ve got a friend who owns a demolition company, and they’re gettin’ ready to tear down some old houses near the downtown area to put up that office complex—you know the one I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I was telling him a few days ago about what happened to your place, and he told me that sometimes they come across, well, I guess you’d call ’em spare parts, when they’re gonna tear a place down that the owner isn’t going to use. Seems some of those old houses have French doors. Now, most of ’em have been painted over and would need refinishing, but one of the houses was built by the same guy who built your house.”
“How do you know that?”
“Harry Oliver told me one time who the builder was. It was something he’d found out doin’ his gerontology studying.”
“You mean his geneaology?”
“Whatever. Anyhow, this was built by the same guy—I guess this one was the builder’s own house, originally. That’s the only reason he knew the builder’s name—’cause he was also the original owner. What I’m thinking is that maybe those doors would fit your door frames.”
“Sure be worth a try.” Starsky glanced at his watch. “I could take a lunch break and run over there.”
“I’ll meet ya there in half an hour—come to Lexington and Fourth.”
“Gotcha. I’ll be there. Thanks, Mel.” Starsky hung up and jotted a note for Hutch, who was out meeting with one of Huggy’s contacts who claimed to know a guy named Ed Curtis, who had a rap sheet a mile long and had just gotten out of prison. He checked out in the computer as being an unsavory character who’d done time for aggravated assault and rape. Ed was not independently wealthy, however, and the amount of money that “Curtis” was able to toss around remained the most puzzling element of the whole situation.
Starsky picked his way through the debris-strewn property in front of the old house on the corner of Lexington and Fourth. It bore a striking resemblance to their own house, which made him resolve more ardently to get some paint on the exterior soon. With the exception of the new wood of the front porch, their own place didn’t look too much different from the outside than this condemned house.
“Dave—over here!” Starsky followed Mel’s voice to the back of the house. “There’s a back entrance over here. Stan told me we oughtta stick to this one. The front’s not too safe.”
“This guy must not’ve been too good at porches,” Starsky responded, following Mel into the old house. “I fell through ours before we bought the house.”
“Must be why that real estate lady brought somebody back to rope it off, eh?” Mel chuckled a little. “And you still bought it?”
“We weren’t gonna live on the porch, so I figured it could be replaced.” Starsky was taking in the sights in front of him, which amounted to a war-torn version of the house he was living in.
“Looks like somebody went after the woodwork with a paintbrush, but those doors are in good shape.” Mel led the way into the dining room, and Starsky was instantly thrilled at the sight of doors identical to the ones that had been destroyed.
“They could be sanded down.”
“Sure. There’s another set of ’em right where they oughtta be—just like your place, between the entry way and the living room.”
“So how do we move ’em out of here?”
“Paul’s gonna be home this weekend,” Mel referred to his son, who was in college. “We can rent one of those U-Haul trucks and he can give us a hand. If there’s anything else you want to take a look at, go ahead. They’re tearin’ this down next week.”
“Paul’s probably not going to be too thrilled to spend the day hauling around our French doors and cleaning up our yard.”
“Ah, he’s a good kid. He’ll help out.”
“What do you think about the kitchen cupboards?” Starsky walked back in to examine what must have been original cupboards with windows in the doors. They too would have to be sanded down and refinished, but it would restore the house to almost original condition.
“Most of ’em look okay. This one over here’s missin’ a pane of glass, but that couldn’t be too hard to fix.”
“Hutch’ll probably kill me. He thinks I’m a little warped on the idea of everything being original.”
“That’s what makes a restoration project genuine. Our house has most of its original equipment, right down to that God-forsaken claw foot bathtub.”
“You’ve still got one of those? Man, I was so mad they’d updated both bathrooms in our house—hey, you suppose this place has got one?” Starsky started hurrying through the house, but soon found it had been converted into a two-unit, and the baths had been more cheesily updated than their own.
“I’d sell ya mine, but my wife’s real attached to it. I hate the damn thing myself.”
* * * *
Hutch arrived back at his desk near noon, fully expecting to see Starsky sitting across from it, chomping at the bit to go to lunch. He noted with some sympathy the mountain of papers spread out on the poor guy’s desk. He’d be up to his eyeballs in it for days, just trying to get up to speed on all the crackpots that hotline number had brought out of the woodwork.
There was a note from Starsky, along with a couple of other envelopes on the top of his desk.
“Hutch—
Mel found another old house with some doors. Going to check it out. See ya later, buddy.
Starsk”
Hutch re-read the note. Only Starsky could leave something so completely idiotic-sounding and assume it made perfect sense. Smiling to himself, Hutch picked up a brown business-sized envelope with his name typed on the front. As he opened it, a small syringe, still bearing the plastic safety cover over the needle, fell out on the desk. He pulled out the note.
I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE.
Hutch stuffed both items back in the envelope. The implication was crystal clear. But so few people knew…Starsky, Dobey, Huggy, a couple uniformed cops who’d promised their silence in sympathy for the situation, and Forest and his goons. Monk was dead, and Ben Forest had died in prison two years earlier, victim of an apparent heart attack. There was always Jeannie, but wherever she might be, she certainly had no reason to come back and torment him now. They hadn’t parted enemies. Monk’s other men had plea-bargained their way to lighter sentences, following meetings with Dobey, the content of which no one was exactly sure. Hutch’s best guess was that they’d been promised something for their silence, and most likely certain charges weren’t pursued because of their agreement. Starsky had said the paperwork was all handled by Dobey, and that he had been told not to ask any questions about the charges that were ultimately brought against the remaining thugs in the operation.
So who knows, and why are they coming forward now? Or was Starsky right when he said they should be searching for someone with a grudge against me in connection with his beating? That would be the perfect way to hurt me—to hurt Starsky. And now this. The question is, if they know, what’re they going to do about it?
Hutch went to Dobey’s door and knocked. There was a barked greeting from the other side, so he opened it.
“Captain, I think we need to talk.”
“Have a seat,” Dobey responded routinely, still sorting through a thick folder of papers.
“It’s serious.” Hutch’s voice made Dobey look up. “I should probably be worried about prints on this, but I didn’t know—”
“Well, let’s worry about it now, then.” Dobey accepted the envelope with a handkerchief over his hand, and carefully removed the contents. He glanced up at Hutch a moment as the syringe fell out on the desk, then looked back down at the note he was carefully holding with the handkerchief. “This definitely presents a problem.” Dobey carefully tucked the note back in the envelope and added the syringe.
“If you send that to the lab—”
“I realize what the implications would be.” Dobey rubbed his forehead a moment and stared at the deceptively small, innocent envelope in front of him.
“I’ve been trying to think of who knows…I guess there are a few.”
“Ben Forest is dead, Monk is dead…he has a couple of goons who have probably gotten out of the joint by now, but bringing that up would be pretty foolish for them, since they weren’t tried on those charges the first time around.”
“Somebody knows, Captain.” Hutch wasn’t pleased at the strain in his voice. He realized he was running scared to Dobey, but he was beginning to feel like he couldn’t handle even one more minor crisis, let alone something career-threatening. The six months since Sandra died had been pure hell, with barely a peaceful moment. He was also childishly lamenting that Starsky would pick this one day to go to lunch by himself. If ever he’d needed to see his partner in his life, it had been at the moment that syringe fell out of the envelope on the desk.
“First thing we have to do is stay calm,” Dobey responded. “You know as well as I do that the moment this person goes public or gives out the information, he or she loses power. The power is in what’s hanging over your head. That should guarantee that the jerk who sent this has no plans to reveal it immediately.”
“So what do you think he wants—money? A cover up of something?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. This is just to make you sweat. Next’ll come the demand.” Dobey looked over at his detective with great sympathy. Hutchinson was one of his very best, a dedicated officer and a skillful detective. That he should have spent so many years living in fear of something in his past that was never his fault to begin with was horribly unjust. He also detected the definite signs of stress overload on the pale face before him. “Where’s your partner?” Dobey asked.
“At lunch. Why?”
“Does he know yet?”
“No. I just got this—it was on my desk when I came in. By the way, Ed Curtis is a dead end.”
“We figured as much,” Dobey responded, leaning back in his chair.
“Yeah, well…hope springs eternal, I guess.”
“Hey, I was lookin’ for you,” Starsky said to Hutch as he poked his head in the door.
“Don’t you ever knock, Starsky?” Dobey barked, though he was strangely relieved to see Hutch’s partner show up to take charge of him.
“Sorry, Cap. Am I interrupting something?”
“I got a little love note in the mail this morning.” Hutch nodded toward Dobey’s desk, and the captain went through the annoying task of freeing it from its envelope using the handkerchief again.
“Terrific,” Starsky grumbled, reading over Dobey’s shoulder. “Who’s left that knows? A couple of Forrest’s thugs, probably, but they most likely wouldn’t admit it.” Starsky plunked down in the chair next to Hutch’s. “Now what?”
“We wait,” Hutch recapped their conclusion. “The captain feels the turkey’ll pop up again with some kind of demand in exchange for silence.”
“Good point. Is there anybody in the lab who could check for prints on the QT?” Starsky asked Dobey.
“Let me worry about that.” As he had often done before with incriminating items, he stashed the envelope in his middle desk drawer and slammed it shut. “Anything new on The Bridegroom? They’re gettin’ antsy upstairs.”
“I’ve been up to my neck in papers all morning, and so far most if it’s just crackpots calling the tip line. Whoever thought of that oughtta get his ass kicked.”
“I think that was Deputy Chief Reasoner’s suggestion,” Dobey responded, smiling a little. Whether it was at catching Starsky in the statement or the appealing thought of kicking Reasoner where it hurt, neither detective was sure.
“Now that I’m up to date on every lunatic in Southern California, I might actually be able to do a little analytical thinking this afternoon.”
“We’re starting to look a bit ridiculous here, so if you two can come up with anything for us to get our teeth into, go for it.”
“Will do, Cap.” Starsky stood up. He looked down at Hutch, who had the appearance of a soggy lasagna noodle slumped in the chair. “Hutch?”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Hutch straightened and stood, following Starsky out of the office without much idea of why they were leaving. His mind had traveled back to the threatening note during Starsky’s and Dobey’s exchange.
“I know that note was a jolt, but we’ll handle it, buddy,” Starsky said quietly as Hutch settled back in his desk chair. Starsky perched on the edge of his partner’s desk. “Brings a lot back, huh?”
“Not like I haven’t seen drug paraphernalia in the last five years…somehow this just…ugh,” Hutch concluded, shivering a little. “Yeah, it brought it all back.”
“That note was crap, partner. That whole scene’s got nothin’ to do with you.” Starsky knew that his fleeting addiction haunted Hutch, and that he somehow assumed some of the blame himself, no matter how absurd that was. Hiding it from IA all these years had somehow gotten Hutch believing that it should be a dirty secret. He was an innocent victim, but yet he was the one hiding. IA remains a warped, twisted division…in the process of watch-dogging us, they force us to live lies…punish an innocent man for something he was never responsible for by imposing this vow of silence…
“I still wish it wasn’t hanging over me.”
“It wasn’t your fault, babe,” Starsky whispered. “You know that.”
“Yeah, but IA wouldn’t see it that way.”
“Screw IA.”
“I’ll remind you of that when we’re unemployed.”
“Go ahead. What’s the worst that can happen?” He looked down into Hutch’s worry-wracked face.
“Lose our jobs, lose our house, lose our pensions, have it spread all over the papers—would you like me to go on?”
“We can get other jobs, we can find another place to live, we’re not old enough to draw our pensions yet and if you get enough notoriety out of this, you could write a book and then we’d both be rich. Please try to relax a little.” Starsky rested his hands on either side of Hutch’s neck briefly as he walked around the chair. “Whoa. You’ve got a knot the size of a basketball back here.”
“Starsky.” Hutch was stiffening out even more as his partner slowed down behind him and started working on the knot just under the neck with his thumbs.
“Be quiet. Let the master do his work.”
“Starsky, for pete’s sake—”
“If you think somebody’s lookin’ at us, you can relax,” Starsky said quietly. “The only one who notices is Minnie, and she’s always known we’re a little kinky.” Starsky’s voice had risen so Minnie could easily hear.
“You better watch out, Starsky. Anybody sees you doin’ that, you’re going to have a line-up at your desk.” She rubbed the back of her own neck. “I’d relax and enjoy myself if I were you, Hutch.” She retreated with her coffee back to the dark recesses of R&I. Starsky noticed his partner was, indeed, taking Minnie’s advice. The knot was loosening.
“That’s the ticket, buddy. Relax,” Starsky said quietly as he worked the last of the tension out of the tight spot. “Hey,” Starsky began, patting Hutch’s shoulder and sitting back on the desk, “how about we get a decent bottle of wine, have something good for dinner, and play some chess tonight? That always seems to relax you a little.”
“Starsk, if I get any more relaxed right now, I’m going to slide under the desk.”
“You need to unwind a little. You’re lookin’ kinda tired, pal.”
“I don’t know…how much more of this…” Hutch shook his head slowly, not knowing how to go on because he felt his voice breaking, and he felt ridiculous to sit there and start blubbering the middle of the squad room just because he was tired. But he was so emotionally tired he didn’t feel like anything was left of his strength anymore.
“Come on. We’re going to take a ride.”
“Starsk, there’s work…”
“Let’s see.” Starsky leaned back and picked up a fat file folder off his desk. “I’m going to drive around and see if these are valid addresses, how about that?” Starsky was holding the packet of paperwork on the hotline tipsters.
“That’s stretching it.”
“Hey, I’m supposed to clean up the paperwork here, and since I’m not back on active duty, I should have my partner with me just in case I need help—right?”
“Right,” Hutch responded, grinning a little.
* * * *
They started out, cruising the streets of the city, doing little more than driving down a street, seeing that there was, in fact, such a street number, and continuing to the next stop. Hutch was right—they were really stretching on this one, but the brainlessness and the change of scenery was doing Hutch good. All the time Starsky had been sitting at home, watching TV, visiting with Mel, or playing footsy with Wendy, who had become a very regular visitor during his convalescence, Hutch had been pounding away full speed ahead to wrap up the case against his partner’s attackers and working relentlessly at the task of finding “Curtis.” Through all of it, he wondered when his grief over Sandra and Elizabeth would ever let him out of its grip. He’d had lunch with Cecile a time or two, and it amazed him she was still interested. He hadn’t asked her to go on a real evening out since the night Starsky was attacked.
“Hey, this is upscale,” Starsky stated, shaking Hutch out of his reverie. They were pulling up in front of a sprawling estate, with an elaborate rose garden easily visible from the road. “Hang on a minute. This address…we’ve been here—when we were running to all those houses with rose gardens—get my book out of the glove compartment, will ya? Look up, let’s see, late August, early September—’til you find the rose garden people.” Hutch flipped through the pages as directed.
“12 Huntington Circle. We were here September 3rd, and talked to Grace Jordan, an ‘aristocratic elderly woman,’” Hutch read out of the notes. Starsky still couldn’t stop himself from being descriptive, even if Dobey had stifled that streak in his reports early in their careers.
“She called to say we should check on her grandson—can ya believe that? His name is Evan Jordan, and I have an address here.”
“What’d she say about him?”
“Can you reach those files in the back seat?” Starsky still avoided any sudden or extreme stretching or twisting, both to obey doctor’s orders and honor the dull pain that still lurked in his side.
“Yeah. What’re you looking for?”
“The guy Walling and Shemanski talked to. I think it’s the same one. Let me have a look.” Starsky took the folders and started digging through the papers. “Here he is. Evan Jordan. I remember Grant telling me he was kind of surly, stand-offish—seemed kinda nervous about being questioned. Young guy, about 22 or 23.”
“You want to talk to the old lady first?”
“Yeah. I want to know what she was thinking when she called in this tip. All she said is that her grandson had been acting strangely, and had been unaccounted for at the times of the murders.”
“Does he live here?”
“No, but I guess he didn’t show up for some family gathering the night Coral Rutherford died.”
“Why wouldn’t they pursue this a little harder? Sounds like a hell of a lead to me.”
“Don’t know. My guess would be it got lost in the shuffle, or they didn’t make the connection. Farver and Kennedy were handling all these hotline calls, and Nedloe and Elliot were spending most of their time chasing white supremacists around.”
“Well, let’s go then.” Hutch got out of the car and Starsky followed him, a little bounce in his step at the thought of actually doing some real police work—and at having all that paper-pushing pay off.
They paused at the door of the sprawling white stucco house. The Spanish architecture was stately and impressive, the grounds impeccably manicured. Starsky used the door knocker to announce their arrival.
“May I help you?” A short, stocky woman with white hair in a gray maid’s uniform answered the door.
“I’m Detective Starsky, this is Detective Hutchinson.” Starsky held up his ID. “We need to speak with Mrs. Jordan.”
“Please come in, gentlemen,” she said, opening the door and stepping aside while they entered. After she’d closed the door quietly behind them, she began walking briskly through the entry hall, which was highlighted by a winding staircase and ornate chandelier. “I will let Mrs. Jordan know you are here. You may have a seat in the living room if you like.” She gestured toward a room to their left.
“Nice little shack,” Starsky commented to Hutch as they found their way to a pair of matching chairs near the fireplace in the living room.
“Good afternoon, detectives,” a voice commanded their attention from the living room doorway. Both stood as the stately and elegant Grace Jordan glided into the room. “I believe we met before—you were here to tour the rose garden.”
“That’s right, ma’am. We’re responding to a call you made to the hotline at the precinct regarding The Bridegroom murders,” Hutch explained.
“Oh yes, about Evan.” She sat on the edge of the couch. “Please, sit down. Would you like some coffee?” Both indicated a polite refusal, and she continued. “You might wonder what would possess me to call your hotline about my own grandson. Well, it wasn’t an easy decision. Then, when no one followed up on the call, I assumed it was also a poor one.”
“We apologize for the slow response, but the hotline has been extremely active, and just today, we’ve been able to put someone full-time on the paperwork,” Hutch explained. “My partner is recovering from an accident, so he’s been reviewing and organizing all the tips and information the hotline generated.”
“I hope your recovery is progressing well, Detective Starsky.”
“Thank you. It is,” Starsky responded, smiling.
“I understand one of the victims was your fiancée, Detective Hutchinson.”
“That’s right.”
“I am very sorry for your loss. I certainly hope Evan had no part in it.”
“Thank you. What makes you think he would have any part in these killings?”
“Evan has been a very troubled young man for a very long time. His father died a couple of years ago—”
“Your son?” Starsky interjected.
“No…Evan’s father didn’t actually marry my daughter. He supported them, kept in touch with the boy… My daughter is living in Palm Springs; has been for the past few years. Not that Evan isn’t old enough to take care of himself, but he has seemed to run with a rougher crowd since his mother moved away. What prompted me to call was that Evan has never had the slightest interest in my rose garden until he asked me if he could cut some flowers, not long before you two came around to look at the garden. He said they were for a girlfriend. I found that a bit odd, as he hasn’t introduced anyone. Then I found these in his jacket pocket while he was visiting me a few weeks ago.” She pulled three snapshots from the pocket of her tailored beige suit and handed them to Hutch.
“Oh my God. This is Sandra—and Madeleine Nolan, and Coral Rutherford.” He handed them one by one to Starsky. They were obviously taken when the women were unaware, and from a considerable distance. Sandra was unloading cleaning supplies from her car in front of the house she and Hutch were supposed to share, Madeleine Nolan was standing in line at an outdoor take-out stand, and Coral Rutherford was walking across a hospital parking lot in her uniform.
“I recognized the girls from their pictures in the papers.”
“Have you asked your grandson about these?” Starsky asked.
“No. I…well, I hate to say this of my own grandson, but I’m afraid. Except for Annie, my maid and a part-time gardener who does not live on the premises, I’m alone here. If he has done something…if he killed those girls, God help him, I don’t want to confront him with this. I can’t believe he hasn’t noticed they’re missing. I assume he either isn’t sure where he lost them, or he is and just hasn’t figured out a way to approach me about it.” She watched as Starsky bagged the pictures as evidence, though there was little point after they had been handled as extensively as they had.
“You mentioned that he wasn’t at a gathering he was supposed to attend on the night of Coral Rutherford’s death in your call to the department’s hotline,” Hutch spoke up.
“It was his mother’s birthday, and we were all supposed to have dinner here. She was visiting, staying the night—it was highly peculiar for him to miss dinner. He didn’t arrive until late evening, and then he seemed very distracted and uneasy. He made some excuse about getting the dates mixed up, but that didn’t exactly ring true either.” She paused. “I sincerely hope there’s some other explanation…”
“Mrs. Jordan, do you have a picture of Evan?”
“Why, yes.” She went over to a long lamp table near the window which held numerous family photographs. She selected a framed 5×7 photo and brought it back to Hutch. The young man in the picture seemed to be about medium height, with wavy brown hair and a pleasant smile. He was seated on the grass with a large Irish setter stretched out next to him.
“May we keep this for now?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you again for the information, Mrs. Jordan. We’ll follow up on it carefully.”
“And you’ll keep my name out of it?”
“As long as possible,” Starsky responded. “If this should get to the point of an arrest, we will need to call on you for testimony regarding the photos and anything else you’ve told us.”
“I understand. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.” She stood, and her guests followed suit.
“We’ll be in touch, Mrs. Jordan. Thank you for your help.” Hutch led the way out of the room, and the maid had somehow miraculously appeared in the doorway at just the right moment to lead them to the front entrance.
“I think we got him,” Starsky said, with barely controlled enthusiasm.
“Those photos—God, why else would he have them of all three women?”
“There’s somethin’ familiar-lookin’ about this kid.” Starsky was studying the photograph as they approached the car. “I can’t place it, but it’s like I’ve seen him before.”
“We’ll run him through the computer.”
“Yeah…” Starsky slid behind the wheel of the car and started the engine.
“What’s wrong?”
“I wish I could place where I’ve seen that face. It’s more like he reminds me of somebody. Huh. Oh, well. I guess we’ll know soon enough after we run him through R&I.”
“You mean Minnie’s computer, right?”
“Really. I can’t believe what she can make that thing do.”
* * * *
Minnie began working her magic with Evan Jordan’s name, and found he had no prior record. Not even an unpaid parking ticket. After consulting with Nedloe and Elliot, who described the guy as stand-offish and uneasy, Starsky and Hutch set out to pay him a visit and question him about the photographs.
Evan Jordan had vacated his apartment two days earlier and left no forwarding address. The apartment had been hastily deserted, with a number of personal effects left behind. Nothing was blatantly incriminating, but clothing and a hairbrush provided some rich forensic evidence. With the landlord’s permission, they had the crime lab team scour the apartment for various hair and fiber samples which could be compared to those taken at the murder scenes and also from Hutch’s room and the staircase where the roses were left. If even one of them matched, they could get a warrant.
An APB was issued on Jordan, stating that he was wanted for questioning in connection with the Bridegroom murder case. With every cop on the West Coast wanting a part in the high profile case, it was certain someone would spot him and drag him back for questioning.
“Back to sitting and waiting.” Hutch drained the last of the coffee from his mug and leaned back in his chair. “God, I wish we’d get some lab results.”
“I know. Me too. We’re so damn close, partner. Just hang in there. If there’s just one match…” The ringing of Hutch’s extension cut the conversation short.
“Hutchinson,” he snapped into the phone.
“Hutch, this is Roger in the lab. We’ve got two matches. One is a brown hair taken from Coral Rutherford’s apartment, and the other is a fiber sample taken from the staircase at your house. We can place him both at Coral Rutherford’s apartment and in your house.”
“All right!!” Hutch yelled excitedly. “Starsk—we got him!! Roger, you made my night.”
“Always glad to call with the results people wanna hear.”
“No matches on any of the other locations?”
“God, you’re greedy,” Roger teased good-naturedly. “I’m still working. At first glance, nothing seems to be matching up, but I’m not giving up. I’ll analyze the hell out of this stuff before I give up on it.”
“Thanks, Roger.”
“Hey, no sweat. I’ll call you if anything else matches.”
“Dobey. We gotta tell Dobey.” Hutch started dialing the captain’s home number. Dobey had made his way home a couple of hours earlier, leaving the two detectives to watch the phone. Starsky simply watched, enjoying the complete elation in his partner’s face as he related the news to Dobey, and they discussed contacting the DA’s office to get the green light to pursue a warrant. Dobey assured Hutch he would contact the DA immediately and go over the evidence with him, and call them back.
“If you hadn’t gone through all that…paper…” Hutch gestured toward the mound on Starsky’s desk.
“Maybe I got sidelined here for a reason.”
“What happened to you wouldn’t be worth it, even if we catch the guy.”
“Maybe not, but at least it gives it some sense of value or worth—because if someone hadn’t been sentenced to go through all this junk with a fresh eye, the connections would’ve never happened. And if we hadn’t been goofing off, driving around and looking at those addresses, we’d’a never recognized the house. We just got lucky in a major way, buddy.”
“We gotta get lucky again. We gotta find this guy.” Hutch sat down again and leaned on his desk and shook his head. “When we do catch that son of a—”
“You made it through questioning Mercer and Norton, hearing all the gory details. I know this is going to be a major test, knowing what the bastard did to Sandy and Elizabeth, but I also know you’re up to it.”
“I am, huh?”
“You’re wiped out, tired. That’s understandable. But you’ve got all the strength you need in there somewhere, and it’ll come through for you. I know it.”
“My own personal cheering section, huh?” Hutch smiled faintly. “I don’t feel too strong right now.”
“We’re almost there, buddy. We know who did it. We’ve got forensic evidence, circumstantial evidence—the pictures.”
“I know that. I was so hoping we were going to get to Jordan’s place and he’d be there, and we could put the bastard behind bars NOW.”
“That’s the ideal scenario. You and I both know that ideal scenarios rarely happen. As soon as it hits the press, and it will, his picture is going to be in every paper in the United States. The whole damn country’s gonna be helpin’ us look. And we’re gonna be right here, overseeing the tips from that hotline, following up every one that looks viable.”
“It was a little silly to think he’d go hide with his grandmother.” Hutch referred to the second place they’d gone hunting for Jordan, where they’d had the unpleasant task of informing his grandmother that her suspicions were well-founded. “Farver and Kennedy’ll probably come up empty in Palm Springs.”
“My guess is that he split town—probably the state—when he realized he’d lost those photos.”
“Think they’ll lift any decent prints off those? Mrs. Jordan handled them, then handed them to us—my fingerprints were all over them before I even thought about it. When I saw Sandra…I guess I was too shocked to start handling them carefully.”
“We’ll see. We have prints lifted from Jordan’s apartment, some of which we can certainly assume are his. Maybe they’ll find a match.” Starsky got up, with some difficulty, and paced around the desks.
“You okay?” Hutch asked, concern registering on his face.
“Stiff. My side hurts.” Starsky sat against Hutch’s desk, confiding his miseries in a hushed tone to his partner. There were only a couple of diligent souls at another desk in the far corner of the room, obviously typing up overdue paperwork.
“Sorry I kept you here so long, pal. You’re supposed to be takin’ it easy. They could just as well call us at home with results.”
“Sure you don’t mind? I guess I would like to soak some of the kinks out and get some rest.”
“I’ll let Roger know where to get a hold of us. Hey—have we got any food in the ‘fridge, or should we stop for something?”
“Sally brought leftover meatloaf last night—remember?”
“Meatloaf sandwiches. Sounds good.” Hutch dialed Roger’s extension and notified him of their intent to leave for the night. He placed a similar call to Dobey. “Come on, buddy. Let’s go home.” Hutch headed for the doors, holding one as Starsky passed somewhat slowly through it. He rested a hand lightly in the middle of his partner’s back. “Still hurts pretty bad, huh?”
“Only when I’m awake,” Starsky responded, his grin not fully successful. He leaned a little into Hutch, letting the physical fatigue that had plagued him all day rise to the surface. He was recovering well, but there was still a lot of pain, and he was still favoring his side, which meant he essentially spent all day holding himself in a certain position that was the least aggravating to his healing ribs. For that reason, he had tried the elastic bandage the doctor recommended, but found that more uncomfortable than nothing. More than anything, he was tired of hurting and just wanted to move around freely again.
“It’s been a long day, babe. A little too long for you, just yet,” Hutch said gently, sliding his arm around Starsky’s shoulders.
* * * *
The warm water felt good. It was loosening up the kinks and relaxing him. Starsky felt sure he could fall asleep right there if he hadn’t been so hungry. He’d only had a hot dog on the way back from looking at the old houses with Mel, and the way things had taken off after that, they’d never stopped for dinner. Was that just today that I looked at those French doors, and Hutch got that syringe in the mail? Feels like a year ago. He felt too exhausted to go about the task of actually bathing, but he finally picked up the soap and went about it, figuring Hutch would have easily made sandwiches by now and was probably dying of old age downstairs waiting for him to get out of the tub. Besides, he was starting to take on the appearance of a waterlogged human prune.
There was the smell of food in the air. Cold meatloaf wouldn’t smell like much of anything, so Hutch had to be making some use of his time in the kitchen. As Starsky made his way down the back staircase, he could hear the tail end of some song Hutch had been singing to himself as he worked on something on the stove.
“I smell food,” Starsky announced as he entered the kitchen.
“I thought cold sandwiches weren’t exactly what the doctor ordered since we haven’t eaten most of the day. I’m heating up soup and I put the meatloaf in the microwave. I put some rolls in the oven too. They oughtta be done by now.”
“Wow. I woulda helped ya if I’d known you were gonna do all this.”
“No big deal. All I did was take foil off a plate, take a tray of rolls out of a bag and empty a can of soup in a pan.”
“Still smells great in here. It’s like it used to smell in the winter when I’d come in the back door and dinner was cooking…and it was really freezing outside but it was real warm in the kitchen from the oven going and…sorry, I guess I’m rambling again.” Starsky noticed the wine bottle and glasses on the kitchen table. “Wine?”
“We earned it, don’t you think? It’s good stuff, too.”
“That Lambrusco you had in the back of the ‘fridge?”
“That’s the one. Hey, we’ve gotta celebrate. Even if we haven’t brought the guy in, we know who he is. God knows we’re too wiped out to go out and do anything, so the wine’ll have to do.” Hutch stirred the soup one last time and waved Starsky toward the table. “Sit down. I’ll get the stuff.”
“Thanks.” Starsky followed the directive, relaxing in the chair while Hutch brought over first the meatloaf on one of those new microwave-safe dishes they’d finally invested in, then the tray of rolls and the pan of soup, which he divided up into the two bowls on the table. After depositing the empty pan in the sink, he joined his partner at the table. “Should I pour?” Starsky offered.
“By all means.”
“This stuff looks really good,” Starsky commented as he finished pouring the wine and they both began reaching for the meatloaf and rolls.
“I’m glad Sally next door adopted us,” Hutch added, securing a large chunk of the meatloaf for his plate.
“We gotta drink to something.”
“Oh, right.” Hutch was pensive a moment. “To paperwork that pays off.”
“To grandmothers with consciences.”
“To Roger in the lab,” Hutch added with a chuckle.
“To nailing Jordan to the wall.”
“To us having some good luck for a change.”
“To the good luck I think we kinda always have holding,” Starsky concluded.
“I’ll drink to that,” Hutch tapped his glass against Starsky’s, and finally released from their toasting activities, they sipped the wine and then started enthusiastically devouring the food.
“I never got to tell you about the doors at lunch.”
“What was that note all about anyway?” Hutch asked, remembering the cryptic message about Mel and old houses with doors he’d found on his desk at lunch time.
“Mel called and said he had this friend who does demolition work, and he’s gonna tear down some old houses downtown next week. Anyhow, what it boiled down to is that we can help ourselves to any ‘spare parts’ we want before they tear them down. One of the houses is almost just like this one—the guy who built this house built and lived in that one. There’re two sets of French doors we can have, and the original kitchen cupboards. Mel said he and his son—you remember he told us about Paul, the one at USC?” Hutch nodded, chewing busily. “He said they’d help us move the stuff out of that house over here. I figure I need to call the contractor—if he’s gonna do the stairs, maybe he could install those doors and the kitchen cupboards at the same time.”
“Sure. We’ll just steal some money out of the evidence room from that big drug bust last week and we’ll have just enough to cover it.”
“We haven’t used up all the insurance money yet. I mean, the people at work did the painting, and if we made do with the hardwood floor in the living room instead of putting down carpeting… Mel was right about one thing—the restoration project isn’t really genuine if you don’t have stuff from the right era.”
“Would it matter if I said no?”
“Sure it would matter. But you’re not gonna say no, are ya?” Starsky asked hopefully. Hutch looked across the table at him. If I ever have kids and he teaches them how to work me over, God help me. They’ll be spoiled rotten and I’ll be in debtors’ prison.
“No, I’m not gonna say no, Gordo.”
“Mel said we could rent a U-Haul and pick the stuff up on Saturday. Paul’ll be home, and Mel’s got weekends off. Oh—Sunday? If we have some time, Wendy wants to go pumpkin-shopping.”
“Come again?”
“Wendy asked me about going for a picnic and pumpkin shopping—Halloween, Hutch?”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“I thought you could call Cecile, and we’d make a foursome out of it. Go on a picnic, pick out some pumpkins…I know it sounds a little weird at first, but the more I thought about it, it sounded like fun. Whaddya say?”
“I say that if they haven’t found Jordan we’re still going to need to be accessible this weekend.”
“So? I’ll take the beeper. Come on, Hutch. It’ll be fun. Don’t ya wanna decorate for Halloween?”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well I have. This is the first year since…oh, wow…since I’ve been out on my own…that I’ve got a house with windows I can put a pumpkin in for Halloween.”
“Can’t miss that opportunity,” Hutch responded with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.
“Party pooper.” Starsky returned his attention to his plate for awhile. “How about it?” He finally broached the subject again, and this time, as usual, Hutch caved in and agreed to call Cecile the next morning to invite her along on the pumpkin and picnic outing.
CHAPTER 9
You are the one who helps me fly so high,
You are the rain when my spirits run dry,
You give my life a hope that’s real…
The manhunt for Evan Jordan exploded in the media during the next 48 hours. Every news program, newspaper, and tabloid was screaming to the high heavens about the police’s suspect, and on this one occasion, Dobey and the commissioner worked the press for all it was worth. Photos of Jordan were splattered everywhere, and people were encouraged to call the hotline if they had seen anyone who resembled the suspect. All statements made to the press stressed that Jordan was wanted in connection with the murders, but would not elaborate on the nature of the evidence.
Mel, Paul, Huggy, and Hutch did most of the heavy work of moving the French doors and cupboards from the doomed house to the rickety garage of the Cherry Street house. Hutch teased his partner that he made a wonderful supervisor, but he used a great deal of restraint in teasing him too much, because Starsky seemed impatient enough with his healing ribs and reduced ability. He’d had way too much experience with being in that state after Gunther’s hitmen shot him.
Saturday actually proved to be a fun day, as it ended in a cookout in the backyard at Mel’s, with the majority of the neighborhood invited. Most of the men were involved in the neighborhood watch program, so the two detectives quickly became popular as sources of information and pointers. The women seemed to congregate together, complaining that it was turning into a neighborhood watch meeting with refreshments. Eventually, though, the men tired of discussing home security, dragging as many details about Starsky’s ordeal out of him as they could get—though they mainly seemed to be looking for reassurance that it was not a random crime, and therefore not a threat to their neighborhood—and all ended up sitting around the backyard having an off-key sing-a-long.
Paul was a music major at USC, and his instrument of choice was the guitar. He urged Starsky and Hutch to go next door and get their guitars, and before long, the beer and the singing flowed through the crowd. A couple of ribald toasts were made toward Schoemacher’s house, with the men laughing riotously at the thought of finally putting the unpopular neighbor in his place and curtailing his display of the offensive flag. They still had suspicions that he was tied into what happened to Starsky, and not wanting to jeopardize the search for Curtis, the detectives were mum on the subject. After all, there was no telling that Schoemacher didn’t know “Curtis” or one of the other four assailants. The word of Arnold Mercer or Wendell Norton didn’t carry much weight with the police.
It was after midnight Saturday when they finally retreated back to their own house. Some of the party-goers were still lapping up the last of the beer and their laughter and conversation carried in the air that wafted through the open kitchen window.
“Seems like a good bunch’a people,” Starsky commented, heading toward the TV room.
“I still can’t believe they volunteered to help paint the house.”
“Hutch, take a good look at the front of our house sometime, will ya? We’ve got a new porch—nice, bright-looking unpainted wood—and a house that thinks it’s already gray when it used to be white just because 90% of the paint’s gone off it. They’re probably sick’a lookin’ at it.”
“You’re the one who said we could let the painting go for awhile.”
“It wasn’t such bad advice. When we first moved in, we didn’t have ten or fifteen volunteers lined up to help us paint, did we?”
“Touché.” Hutch laughed a little as he settled in a chair while Starsky sprawled on the couch, flipping channels for something interesting to stare at. Hutch thought to himself that they had certainly under-utilized the second TV. The color set had been returned to the downstairs TV room, which still held old furniture from both guys’ apartments. It was comfortable to go wallow in a little piece of the past now and then.
“Oh, Hutch, you gotta check this out.” Starsky had paused on a myriad of flashing images, and was cranking up the volume. A wiry man with spiky red hair in a black suit was dancing around, gibbering inanely about turning Japanese, and those images were interspersed with vacant-looking Geisha girls. The music was bizarre, the imagery chaotic. “MTV—it just started up a month or so ago. I started watching it while I was home.”
“What the hell is this, Starsky? It’s possibly the worst thing I ever heard.”
“The Vapors— ‘Turning Japanese.’ This isn’t the best one, though. There’s one with a bunch of women dressed in tin foil sliding down plastic tubes and it’s something about video and the radio star. And there’s this other one where the guy—”
“And the point to all this is…?” Hutch asked, obviously not appreciating the artistic value of the leaping, gyrating man on the screen.
“It’s all music—but it’s like these little movies—they’re called videos, Hutch. If you don’t like this one, just wait a few minutes. They’re only as long as the songs.”
“Oh.” Hutch waited. The next video that came on was better. A guy was strolling around what looked like the stage of an old theater, then draped himself on a player piano and started singing. Then the old theater backdrop went up like the stage curtain that it was, and the rock band behind it launched into a fast-paced song. Hutch actually stayed interested in exploring the joys and sorrows of MTV with his partner until they both concluded they were dozing more than watching and called it a night near two a.m.
* * * *
Wendy had volunteered to prepare the food for Sunday’s picnic in the park, so all that remained was to bring the wine. It was a sunny autumn day, the temperatures hovering the mid-sixties. Hutch drove the Mercury, as it was determined his car was the largest of the four they had to choose from between them. They stopped to pick Wendy up first. She lived in an apartment complex about fifteen minutes from their neighborhood. As soon as Starsky caught sight of her emerging from the door with the basket, he hurried up the walk to take it from her, and after exchanging a quick kiss, they were instantly laughing and talking on their way back to the car.
Hutch was surprised at Starsky’s enthusiasm for this girl. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t particularly beautiful, either. Starsky had a reputation for picking eye-popping women. Terry had been a more subtle beauty, but she had been undeniably pretty, nonetheless. But something in Wendy seemed to strike a chord in Starsky, and they had been seeing each other frequently ever since he’d been released from the hospital. He assured Hutch that her tendency to “never shut up,” as he complained about in the hospital, stemmed from nervousness. When she was relaxed, according to his partner, she was great company.
“Hi, Hutch,” Wendy greeted cheerfully as she got in the back seat. Starsky got in with her.
“Hi, Wendy. Hey, partner, what am I, your chauffeur?”
“Yeah, just like dad on prom night, huh?” Starsky shot back. A giggle came as if on cue from Wendy.
Cecile was ready and waiting when they arrived, and Hutch went up the steps of her front porch to carry the covered plate she was carrying. She was dressed in a fashionable safari-style slacks and blouse outfit with a vividly-colored print scarf tying her hair back. She was only slightly shorter than Hutch, and they made a very stunning couple.
“She’s pretty,” Wendy commented as Starsky was watching his partner and his date approach the car. He glanced back at Wendy, who seemed to be assessing her jeans, sneakers and cotton shirt. Hell, at least Wendy knows how to dress for a picnic and buying pumpkins, Starsky thought.
“We’ll see how pretty she looks after she picks up her first muddy pumpkin,” Starsky responded, smiling widely at Wendy. “She’s got nothin’ on you, schweetheart,” he added, kissing the end of her nose following what he considered one of his best Bogie impersonations.
“Thanks.” She smiled, and he was amused to see the blush make it all the way to her ears, visible with her wavy sandy hair tucked behind them. Maybe she isn’t a goddess, but she’s cute in her own way, Starsky concluded. As the other couple entered the car, Hutch handled the introductions.
“Cecile Valentine, meet Wendy Maguire.” The girls exchanged greetings, and the car began weaving lazily through the Sunday traffic toward the park.
* * * *
“You have to give me your recipe for the potato salad,” Cecile urged Wendy as they all were relaxing, sipping their wine after stuffing themselves on sandwiches and cold salads.
Wendy, for her part, seemed perfectly content as she sat there against a tree with Starsky’s head in her lap. He had taken up residence there while she fed him grapes, a scenario Hutch couldn’t help teasing them both about. Maybe he was teasing his partner because he and Cecile were sitting like two Victorians on their end of the blanket, making polite conversation. Hutch could recall a couple of afternoons like this when Sandra was alive…Starsky would be doing pretty much what he was doing at this moment, snuggled up somehow with his date, and Hutch would be sitting there with Sandra tucked comfortably in his arms. As much as he liked Cecile, Sandra’s ghost was still tucked securely in his arms and did not appear inclined to relinquish her spot.
“It’s my mother’s recipe. She has a few secret ingredients—she’d probably kill me if I gave out her recipe.”
“It was wonderful. Mine always comes out…flat.” Cecile was smiling easily, her attention turned back to Hutch again.
Glad you’ve got something that comes out flat, you overgrown living Barbie doll, Wendy thought, fully enjoying her moment of catty victory. You’ve got great legs and I’ve got great recipes. Twenty years from now, we’ll see which attribute is still as good as it is today. Of course, somehow, I’ve got Dave’s head in my lap and you can’t get Hutch to hold your hand. On that happy thought, she dropped another grape in her date’s mouth, not terribly interested at that moment in whether he wanted another or not. Cecile seemed ruffled by the whole scenario, and that was worth plenty. She wasn’t terribly opposed to the way he had of nipping playfully at her fingers every now and then either. What’d I ever do to get a lapful like this one? She smiled down at him affectionately, and it was returned.
After lolling around in the park the better part of the afternoon, they made their way to a fruit stand which had a reputation for a bountiful pumpkin selection. Cecile was intent on acquiring a few, plus some Indian corn and some fresh apples. Starsky thought he heard Hutch and Cecile extolling the virtues of hot cider, and reminiscing about childhood experiences with Halloween. Maybe there was some hope for that pair yet.
Wendy was acquiring a few more bunches of grapes, which of course sent both Starsky and her into a fit of giggles at the check out counter, making Hutch wonder just what Wendy and her grapes had meant to his partner during his convalescence. Starsky had chosen two obscenely obese pumpkins and one elongated one that was equal in weight to the others. That would be the sad one, he decided. Wendy only chose one moderate, well-shaped pumpkin as her apartment didn’t offer the same kind of room as the guys’ or Cecile’s big old houses did.
Loaded beyond its capacity with an eclectic mix of produce and passengers, the Mercury labored its way to each stop, dropping off Wendy first and then Cecile.
“Tell me the grape story,” Hutch prodded as soon as they pulled out of Cecile’s drive.
“Oh that.” Starsky chuckled a little. “Well, you know Wendy kept me company once in awhile while I was off work, and when she first started coming over, right after you got tied up with Mercer and that whole mess? I was still pretty slow gettin’ around, so she’d fix me lunch and wait on me if I needed anything. One day she was teasin’ me, and she said ‘is there anything else, your highness?’ Well, I couldn’t resist, so I told her to feed me some grapes and fan me. I was lying on the couch in the TV room. Next thing I know, she comes in with this bunch of grapes, and seriously starts feedin’ ’em to me. It was funny, but in a way, it was sort of a turn-on.”
“Grapes?” Hutch asked, unconvinced.
“Well, yeah…”
“There’s more to this story that I’m not gonna hear, is that it?”
“That about covers it, yeah,” Starsky replied, grinning from ear to ear.
* * * *
Monday was a long, frustrating day of haunting the desks of the two unlucky detectives, Farver and Shemanski, who were handling the telephone tip line. Since most of the callers were dead ends anyway, Dobey felt their time would be better spent cleaning up some old paperwork. Making the manhunt for Evan Jordan quite so public had its drawbacks, but the sincere hope was that the exposure would leave him with no viable place to hide.
Discouraged with nothing worthwhile coming in over the phones, and shooed away from the desks by the irritated detectives on the project, Starsky and Hutch finally retreated to their own desks and started wading through a stack of outdated paperwork Dobey had emphatically announced was reprehensibly late. It was somewhat anti-climatic to spend hours typing up reports and filling out forms relating to cases that had either been closed or solved several weeks earlier after launching a national manhunt the previous week.
“You wanna come downstairs with me?” Starsky asked his partner, who was busily completing one of many forms on his desk. “Minnie’s gonna show me how she enters this stuff after we get the reports done. I wanna see how she puts it on the computer.”
“You go on. I don’t have time to worry about how Minnie does her job today. I’ll be lucky to get my own done.”
“You don’t have to be so cranky about it.” Starsky finished his coffee, piled up his papers and headed for the door.
“Starsk?”
“Yeah?”
“Tell Minnie I said ‘hi.’” Hutch was smiling. Starsky returned it.
“Will do.”
Hutch completed the form, pulled it out of the typewriter and added it to the pile that were finished. It paled in comparison to what was yet to be done. Sighing, he rolled the next one in and pulled out his notes to start filling in the information. Even a routine phone call is a relief, he thought as he picked up his ringing extension.
“Hutchinson.”
“Ken, this is Cecile. Would you be free to meet me somewhere for lunch?”
“I’m really snowed under today. Any chance we could make it, say, Wednesday?” he asked, flipping the pages on the desk calendar he and Starsky had finally opted to share. It became easier for Starsky to write in his appointments in blue and Hutch to write his in black on the same sheets than to constantly compare two calendars. Dobey had become fond of the system quickly, because he could always track both down from one source.
“I need to see you today, Ken. It’s very important.”
“Okay.” Hutch looked at the clock. “Would 12:30 be okay? I’ve got a full desk and I have to at least finish up the report I’m working on before I take off again.”
“That’s fine. Meet me at Tony’s?” She referred to an Italian restaurant both had enjoyed on their last visit there.
“Sure. Is anything wrong?”
“I…I think we should talk face to face.”
“All right. I’ll see you at 12:30 then.”
* * * *
Thirty minutes later, Hutch was pulling into the lot at Tony’s. Starsky had disappeared into the bowels of R&I and never returned, probably eating lunch with Minnie and learning the deep, dark secrets of her computer.
Cecile’s car, a yellow Cadillac Seville, was already parked near the entrance. The real estate business is lucrative as ever, Hutch thought, making his way through the lunch hour line to see Cecile seated in a remote booth in the corner of the dimly lit restaurant.
“Thanks for coming. I know it wasn’t a good time,” she said as he slid into his side of the booth.
“That’s all right. What’s wrong, Cecile? It sounded pretty serious on the phone.”
“I received this in the mail this morning.” She slid a brown inter-office envelope across the table to him.
Hutch opened the envelope, and froze when he pulled out the photograph. It took a moment before he even realized the bruised, scruffy, wild-eyed man on his knees was himself. He’d never really gotten a good look at himself during the heat of his ordeal with the heroin six years earlier, but here it was, in living color. Who in hell would have a photo like this one? Ben Forest? One of his goons?
“I can explain,” he began, though he honestly wondered how. He didn’t feel he knew her well enough to confide the truth to her. The point was, here he was in the photo, on his knees, the rubber tie around his arm and someone injecting him with the stuff. His own hand was near the syringe, probably a feeble attempt to prevent the injection—or by that point, maybe he was begging for it…he was no longer certain. The angle at which the photo was taken made it appear he was injecting himself.
“Look, I’m not judging you, and I don’t know all the circumstances, but I…well, I thought you should have that, first of all, and secondly, I—”
“What happened here wasn’t my choice. Several years ago, I was abducted, and this was…part of the whole ordeal. I never shot up voluntarily.”
“That must have been awful,” she said quietly, her face registering a sincere sympathy.
“It’s not something I like to talk about and…and it isn’t something I can talk about. Cecile, I could lose my job over this.” He didn’t see any other option than to be straight with her and hope she would be cooperative. She reached out and squeezed the wrist of the hand that held the photo.
“Ken, I really am sorry for what you went through, because it’s obvious from that picture that it was a terrible ordeal. I would never say anything to anyone else. I promise you that.” She took her hand back and straightened in the booth. “But I’ve been through all this before.”
“What?” Hutch was tucking the photo in the envelope.
“About ten years ago—I was just starting college. I met the most wonderful guy—total Bohemian artiste—he painted amazing abstract scenes. I was very much in love with him. We finally moved in together, and I got to know where he got his ideas. He was a drug addict. He had achieved a certain level of local success with his work, so he had enough money to feed his habits—so while he seemed a bit erratic at times while we were dating, I didn’t know why—I attributed it to his personality.”
“But this wasn’t a habit—I was strung out, badly, and—”
“You don’t understand. This isn’t about blaming you—please, let me finish.” She took a deep breath, and both simultaneously dismissed the waiter who came to take their order. “When I found out what Jerry was into, I confronted him. We had all sorts of fights about it. I thought it was something he should try to kick, get away from. He thought I was uptight and unreasonable. The sad part of it was, he really did love me, and I loved him. In the end, he tried to kick it for me. He went through rehab twice, and the second time, we really thought he’d be okay. We had been together almost three years by that point.”
“But I take it things didn’t go well?”
“No. Not for long.” She fidgeted with the rolled cloth napkin at her place. Her curly brown hair was shadowing her expression as her head inclined forward. Then, with characteristic resolve, she tossed the curls back and straightened in her seat. “About four months after he left rehab, he committed suicide. He mixed up a narcotic nightmare and absolutely blasted his system with it. It was no accidental O.D. He knew exactly what he was doing. He couldn’t handle being off the drugs, and he knew he’d lose me if he went back on them again.”
“I’m sorry. That was a horrible situation, but it really is nothing like—”
“I can’t go through something like that again. I nearly died with him. I blamed myself—I was so depressed for so long I thought about suicide. So finally I threw myself into my work, made it a vocation, not a job. It’s been good to me. My life is back together, I feel good about where I am now and I would like to have a relationship. A healthy, simple, secure relationship.”
“Relationships are rarely simple, and security…well, that’s pretty elusive, too.”
“My point here is that I can’t handle another situation like I faced with Jerry.”
“This happened six years ago, Cecile. I haven’t touched anything since. I never really wanted to again—not once I kicked it.”
“This is only part of…Ken, I like you a lot. I think you’re a great guy, you’re good company. This isn’t because I haven’t enjoyed the time we’ve spent together. But it’s very obvious that you’re not over Sandra’s death yet. I understand how you feel because God knows, I’ve been there. But I can’t compete with a dead woman’s sainted memory, anymore than the men I saw after Jerry could compete with him until I was over it enough to want to let someone in. You’re not there yet, Ken. Trust me. When you are, you’ll know it. And I want something more serious than playing around.”
“That’s fair enough,” Hutch responded quietly. He’d come to like Cecile very much, even though she was right to assume he hadn’t made the full adjustment yet from Sandra’s death. He was in no way emotionally prepared to love anyone again, but if he had been, Cecile would have been a candidate. “I can’t argue with you. I would like to keep in touch though, maybe still get together—”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’m looking for something different than friendship right now, and I was really attracted to you. I don’t think I’d enjoy being your friend much longer.”
“I see.” Hutch nodded, tucking the envelope in the pocket of his brown suede jacket. “Well, I guess that’s it then.”
“I’m sorry, Ken. I didn’t want to hurt you but—”
“Those are the breaks, right?” He laughed a little ironically. Cecile looked more contrite than before, but she showed no signs of changing her mind. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I have to go.” He began sliding toward the end of the booth, but she caught his arm.
“I wish…our timing had been different.”
“I wish you hadn’t seen that damn picture.” He gently pulled his arm away and slid out of the booth, walking briskly toward the door. He felt all her arguments were valid, but they were so carefully constructed that in his heart, he believed the only reason he had just been dumped was because of the photo. She doesn’t want to date a junkie, and she doesn’t want the risk of being involved with me since some pervert knows who she is and where she works and is already sending her weird mail because of me.
* * * *
By three in the afternoon, Starsky was getting seriously worried. He’d come back to the squad room by one, launched back into the paperwork, and by two, assumed there was something wrong and started calling all over town to find Hutch. He hadn’t left any kind of note, and Dobey was not only puzzled, but irritated at his prolonged absence.
Unable to sit still any longer, Starsky piled up his papers and headed for the door. He’d tried calling the house repeatedly, but that was no substitute for seeing for himself. There was, after all, a nut out there somewhere trying to get at Hutch who knew about his brush with heroin…can’t take any chances.
The gray Mercury was parked in the driveway. Starsky pulled in behind it and hurried up to the side door, letting himself in and calling to his partner.
“Hutch? Hey, are you okay?” He started walking through the house, getting increasingly nervous the longer he searched and called out with no response. He hurried upstairs to the second floor, and finally, in the library, in what seemed to be his favorite spot, he found Hutch.
The library, like the living room, boasted a large window seat in a curved shape, the interior of the turret that gave the exterior such a Gothic look about it. Hutch loved to sit in that spot in the library, with a panoramic view of the neighborhood, and read or strum on his guitar or just look out the window. Starsky noted the almost empty whiskey bottle sitting upright on the floor. Hutch was tilting a glass to drain the last of the liquor before refilling it.
“Not answerin’ the phone, huh?” Starsky sat on an opposite side of the curved window seat, facing Hutch.
“Couldn’t think of anybody I wanted to talk to. Including you.”
“Well, that’s too damn bad, buddy, because here I am. You wanna tell me why you’re getting smashed in the middle of the afternoon?”
“No, or I would have picked up the goddamn phone one of the ten thousand times you called here!” Hutch snapped back at him.
“Hey, I’m not the enemy here, buddy. Why don’t you just tell me what’s eating you?”
“You had to keeping pushin’ at me, didn’t you? I knew I should’ve left her alone. I wasn’t ready for this.”
“We’re talking about Cecile now, right? What happened?”
“She got this in the mail,” he announced, tossing the envelope at Starsky, “and she’s convinced I’m not over Sandra—and she’s right, incidentally—and she doesn’t want to be ‘just friends.’”
“Oh my God,” Starsky murmured as he stared at the photograph. It was carrying him right back to the day he found Hutch in the alley, only worse. Now he had to deal with the visual image of what they’d done to his partner. His hands shook slightly as he stuffed the photo back in the envelope. “Who…I don’t understand…who could have something like this?”
“They sent it to Cecile at her office, and she dumped me. She dated a junkie before and he O.D.’d and I guess she doesn’t want to date another one.”
“You’re not a junkie, Hutch. You never were.”
“That’s one thing I heard loud and clear in that alley, partner. ‘My God, he’s a junkie.’ And now Cecile knows.”
“Don’t you ever dare call yourself that again, do you hear me? That’s not what you are. It was all against your will, buddy.”
“Technicality.” Hutch downed another gulp of whiskey.
“So if something’s forced on you against your will, that’s just a technicality? So if Mercer had gotten a chance to do what he wanted to me that night, that woulda made me gay—or his lover? According to you, the fact it was against my will was irrelevant! Think about what the hell you’re saying, and how stupid it really is. There’s precious little difference between what happened to you with Forest’s goons and what almost happened to me right out there in that hallway! With my arms tied over my head on that railing and Mercer untying my ankles… I know what that felt like…that God-awful helplessness… to be reduced to…to lying there and waiting for it to happen,” Starsky concluded, choking out the words with great difficulty.
He took a shaky breath and forced himself to continue. “What Ben Forest’s cronies did to you, working you over, shooting you up, stringing you out—it wasn’t sexual, but it was violation, and domination, and it was against your will. Damn it, Hutch, it wasn’t your fault. You never touched that stuff once you were off it.” Starsky watched his partner’s already-bleary eyes fill up, and before they could overflow, Hutch wiped at them clumsily. “You’re right to be mad at me for pushing you with Cecile. I was way out of line.” Starsky was anxious to get off the topic of his own ordeal. It was not a subject he handled well, even after some time had passed. “I just wanted to see you have some fun again.”
“I’m sorry. I’m drunk,” Hutch announced in a less than steady voice.
“No shit.” Starsky was glad to see his retort bring a slight chuckle out of his partner.
“I opened that envelope, and it all just rushed back…all those fragments…my mind was so foggy then, but those memories… I worked hard for a long time at forgetting…”
“Why didn’t you call me instead’a comin’ here and gettin’ plastered by yourself? Hell, we coulda gotten plastered together. Now I’m way behind an’ I’ll never catch up.” Starsky was smiling a little, but his sentiment was sincere. It hurt that Hutch had still crawled off alone to lick his wounds.
“What the hell could you do about any of this shit? I don’t blame Cecile. Nobody’s worth all this hassle.”
“You are.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, pal, but I’m no bargain. I can’t get past losing Sandra and Elizabeth, I’m depressed… You didn’t have any choice but to ride all this crap out with me. You were already stuck with me when Ben Forest got a hold of me, and everything else…you’re so damned loyal that—”
“That what? I’m incapable of making up my mind? Hutch, I made a choice in that alley, and I’ve made a choice everyday I’ve known you, just like anyone else in any relationship does. You can end it, or you can ride it out. And sometimes it’s hell, because when you love somebody, seein’ them hurt rips your heart out… But if I could go back, back to the alley or any other time we’ve made it through that was rough…I’d do it all again in a minute. Because you’re worth whatever it takes, partner. It’s all been worth it, babe. Every minute of it. Even Gunther—”
“Nothing was worth that.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, buddy. We were worth it. And knowing what I know now, if I had to choose us never being partners and not getting shot by those jerks in that parking lot, or playin’ the game the way we’ve played it, but playin’ it together—I wouldn’t change a minute, Hutch. Not one minute.” Starsky watched his partner finish his glass of whiskey, then unsteadily reach down to set it on the floor.
“Sorry I yelled at you,” he mumbled.
“Apology accepted. Look, I better get this over to Dobey. He’s gotta know about this. I also want to find out if he’s had that other thing checked for prints…though I don’t know who he’ll have do it.”
“Go ‘head. I’m okay here,” Hutch responded, reaching back down for the bottle.
“Ah-ah.” Starsky got up and intercepted the sluggish maneuver, taking the bottle and the glass to the reading table near the shelves. Their chessboard was still there, the positions of the pieces unchanged since their last interrupted game. “Hey, when you sober up, we’ve gotta finish this. I think I was winning.”
“You’re always winning,” Hutch complained. Teaching Starsky to play chess had been the bane of his existence, because the other had a surprising and uncanny ability for the game. Or maybe it was just that he could read Hutch’s mind, and knew exactly why he made each move he made. In any event, Hutch’s won-lost record was looking pretty sorry.
“Yeah, well, I’m a lucky guy, I guess.” Starsky approached his slouched partner. “Come on. Before ya pass out on me, I wanna get you into bed. I can’t carry ya just yet.”
“I’m okay right here. Don’t wanna go to bed yet.”
“No arguments. In about five minutes you’re gonna pass out. I can tell.”
“How d’you know? I can hold my liquor,” Hutch announced defensively.
“You were havin’ your troubles holdin’ the bottle. Come on,” he prodded, pulling at an unwilling arm. Hutch finally stood, swayed and landed with one arm over Starsky’s shoulders for support, and allowed himself to be led into his room and deposited on the bed. He was drifting from the booze now, feeling that long-desired fogginess sweeping over his brain, dulling the pain of the memories the photo had conjured up. He felt Starsky tugging his holster off and grunting a little at manipulating what was becoming dead weight. He imagined he should worry about Starsky’s almost-healed ribs, but somehow the concept just wouldn’t take shape in his mind that he should sit up or move.
Finally, that jostling was over and his shoes were pulled off. Starsky was working now at positioning him on his side. Ever since Starsky had read about some singer in a rock band who died choking on his own vomit from a drinking binge, he’d been careful to make sure his drunken partner was on his side, with pillows wedged behind his back so he couldn’t roll over. Not that Hutch made getting dead drunk a habit, but it had happened a few times in the last couple of years. Of course, half of those times, Starsky was in worse shape than he was, and they were lucky to come to on any horizontal surface in any reasonable position, neither one capable of helping the other.
“Starsk?”
“Right here, pal.” Starsky was carefully covering Hutch with the comforter from the foot of his bed.
“Yer m’bus frnd,” he slurred drowsily.
“You’re my best fern, too, partner,” Starsky replied, laughing a little. “Get some rest, Blintz. I’ll be back before you wake up.” Hutch mumbled something else, and Starsky thought he understood it, so he answered. “Yeah, I promise, buddy.”
A little troubled at Hutch’s depressed state, Starsky took the Magnum in its holster and set it on the closet shelf. Not that Hutch couldn’t find it there, but if he had to stop to think it over before he sought it out, Starsky was confident there was no danger he’d do anything foolish. But a drunken cop who’s deeply depressed shouldn’t be within arm’s reach of a loaded gun.
* * * *
Starsky poked his head in the door of Dobey’s office. The captain was on the phone, but motioned to him to come in and have a seat. When he finished the call, he leaned back in his chair.
“Your timing is excellent. That was my friend over at the LAPD. I had him do the check on the little trinket your partner got in the mail. Zip. No prints but Hutch’s.”
“Terrific.” Starsky pulled the other envelope out of his jacket pocket, which he had put in a freezer bag he found in the kitchen drawer before coming in. There was little hope any prints but Hutch’s, Cecile’s and his own could be gleaned from it, but he thought he would at least try to follow some procedure in handling it.
“What’s that?” Dobey’s voice sounded instantly suspicious.
“Another souvenir from the Forest situation.” Starsky handed it across the desk, and waited while Dobey carefully opened the envelope, using his handkerchief, and pulled out the photo.
“Dear God. Some sick bastard actually took pictures?”
“Maybe Forest had other plans—maybe he was gonna use them to get to me if he had to, I don’t know…he was planning on killing Hutch, so he wouldn’t have had blackmail plans.” Starsky took a deep breath. “This was delivered to a lady Hutch has been seeing—Cecile Valentine. She’s the realtor who sold us our house. She got this in her inter-office mail.”
“So we know he somehow got a hold of one of these envelopes, and knows about the girl, and probably had some dealings with New Horizons Real Estate to accomplish this.”
“Hutch isn’t gonna come back in today, Cap. He’s…” Starsky considered all the clever excuses he could make, and decided on the truth. “He was real upset about this, and Cecile broke it off with him when she saw it, and he spent some quality time with a bottle of whiskey at home before I caught up with him.”
“I’m getting a little worried about Hutch, Dave. He’s not handling this well.”
“I know that.” Starsky was a little thrown by the use of his first name. Dobey must be really worried, or preparing to lower the boom on us about something, Starsky thought to himself. “It’s been so much—for anybody to handle. I mean, it all started with Sandra’s death, that mannequin…what happened to me, dealing with scum like Mercer and Norton. I know he’s still worried about this Curtis character showing up to finish me off. Now this shit with the syringe and this picture.” Starsky shook his head. “The whole thing with him gettin’ strung out…he always seemed to kinda blame himself—and IA’s stand on that doesn’t help. He’s had to hide it like a dirty secret for years. Damn it, he was the victim. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I don’t agree with IA on a myriad of things, Starsky. This would be one of them.”
“You’re going to be on the line if this goes public too, ya know.”
“I know that. I chose to take that risk six years ago. I don’t regret it.”
“Thank you.” Starsky looked up to have direct eye contact with Dobey. “I don’t know if I ever said it in so many words back then.”
“Hutch is a damn fine detective, one of the best. Throwing his whole career out the window over this incident would have been, in my opinion, ludicrous.”
“Yeah, but this could mean your job if this all comes out.”
“We’ll just have to ride it out and hope for the best. That’s not much of a solution. Believe me, I’ve spent a couple of sleepless nights trying to come up with a better one.” Dobey sighed heavily. “What’s worrying me more is if he can handle this now.”
“I don’t know, Cap. God, I wish I knew. I know the guy so well, for so long…he’s probably the strongest person I’ve ever known. But you play mind games on Hutch long enough, and it wears on him worse than physical torture. He’s a thinker, ya know? Me, I think about things, but not so much or so hard. Hutch thinks a lot—almost like a separate activity.” Starsky knew he wasn’t making a lot of sense, but Hutch was such a philosophical person, one who analyzed and evaluated things carefully…tinkering with his mind was a dangerous game. You could push him in all sorts of bizarre directions, especially given his propensity for taking on the blame for everything from Starsky being shot by Gunther’s hit men to the price of eggs going up.
“Thinking can be a rewarding activity, Starsky.” Dobey had a ghost of a smile on his face.
“So I’m told,” Starsky replied, returning the smile.
“What does Hutch need, in your opinion, to get him through this?”
“I wish it were as simple as time off or a lighter caseload. He needs Jordan behind bars, an answer to who Curtis is, and him off the streets—and then he needs to find this creep who’s badgering him now.”
“Is there anything within the scope of my authority that would help? In case you haven’t looked lately, Starsky, I’m not the Wizard of Oz.”
“Honestly? I don’t know. He wants to be around for any new developments on the case, so I don’t think time off is the answer. Actually, even the paperwork doesn’t seem to be bothering him. It’s everything else, all the stuff we can’t control.”
“Think he’s gonna make it?”
“I’m not gonna let him not make it.” Starsky smiled faintly. “It’s that simple.”
“Go home and check on him. Then tell him to get his butt back in here tomorrow and get those reports cleaned off his desk.”
“Aye, Aye, Captain.” Starsky stood up and walked toward the door. “Thanks.”
“Goodnight, Starsky.” Dobey went back to his paperwork, a little grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. Starsky left the office and headed for home.
* * * *
Dusk was settling as Starsky pulled back in the driveway. There were no lights on except for the one he left on in the upstairs hall in case Hutch came around and he wasn’t home before dark. He turned the key in the lock and went in through the side door into the kitchen. A scream from upstairs startled him into instant action. It was Hutch’s voice. He drew his gun and rushed up the back stairs, flattening himself against the wall, realizing how impossible it was to safely inspect each of the rooms accessed through the oak-framed doorways on either side of the hall.
“Hutch!” He waited. There was no response. He realized some of his hesitation came from the fear that seemed to always wash over him now when he reached the upstairs hall. It had gotten better, but it wasn’t gone. Curtis was still out there somewhere, and he could always hire more goons.
Curtis be damned. Starsky rushed toward Hutch’s room, and saw his partner writhing around on the bed, obviously in the grip of a nightmare. He recalled a younger Hutch, writhing in much the same way, his mind tortured by the demons of the heroin.
“Hutch,” he said firmly, holstering his gun. He had to get him to come to. An afternoon of drinking on an empty stomach wasn’t helping matters any. “Hutch, it’s me, buddy.” He sat on the bed and took a hold of Hutch’s shoulders. “Come on, wake up, pal. It’s me. It’s Starsk.” The shaking, sweating man whose eyes flew open and wildly searched his face was all too frighteningly familiar…they could have just as easily been right back in that room over Huggy’s…
“Help me…I need help…Starsky…I—”
“Hey, come on, I’m right here, babe. Just try to relax.”
“They were talking…about the point…where the water…was deepest…and the tide would…carry the body…and sharks…”
“It’s over, Hutch. That was six years ago, pal.” Starsky slid his arm under Hutch’s shoulders and pulled him up into an embrace. The other’s arms locked tightly around him. So they even talked about how they were going to dispose of you right in front of you…like you were some useless piece of garbage they were finished with…your life was so meaningless to them…and so precious to me…
“I didn’t remember…the memories…” he muttered brokenly into Starsky’s shoulder.
“They’re comin’ back now, huh?” Starsky rubbed his back, feeling the labored, shuddering breaths rattle it. “It’s all over. We beat it, Hutch. You’re okay, Blintz. I’ve got ya now.”
“I was…begging them for it, Starsk.”
“You weren’t in your right mind, babe. You pump enough junk into somebody’s system and they’ll do anything. Look at what happened on that island when I attacked you—whatever those drugs were that Papa Theodore was using were powerful enough, along with the hypnosis, to make me do the most unthinkable thing in the world. They played with your mind. That’s not your fault.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Hutch croaked out.
“We’ve got it covered, buddy.” Starsky grabbed the wastebasket under the night stand, making an expert save just in time.
“Sorry,” Hutch croaked with almost no voice as he slumped back against Starsky, letting the other wipe his chin and mouth with a handkerchief.
“Shhh. It’s okay.” Starsky managed to set the basket aside and put both arms back around his shivering partner. “Remember that flu I had last year? You forgave me for throwing up all over your new leather jacket.” A weak chuckle came from Hutch. “Now that’s love,” Starsky said jokingly, thinking how impossibly ruined the tan suede jacket had been, and how much it had cost in the first place. “I hoped you’d never have real clear memories of the worst of it, buddy.”
“They aren’t real clear, and I still don’t remember all of it…some things I do. I remember how damn glad I was to see you show up in that alley. Just like today.”
“Okay, then next time you feel lousy, you find me instead of a whiskey bottle, huh? I might talk back more but I usually don’t make you throw up.”
“Most of the time, anyway,” Hutch retorted, pulling away and sitting against the headboard. “What’d Dobey have to say?”
“They didn’t get any prints off the first item. He has a friend at the LAPD who ran the tests. I left this one with him. His reaction was pretty much like ours—he wondered what kind of sicko would take that picture, and I think it brought a lot back to him too.”
“I feel like shit. I know it’s my own fault.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“No, I didn’t figure you were, pal.”
“Why don’t you take a shower? You’ll probably feel a little better.”
“Yeah. I guess I will.”
“By the way,” Starsky began, standing up, “Dobey said to get your butt back into work tomorrow and clear off your desk.”
“Some things never change,” Hutch commented, smiling a little.
“I’ll help ya. Then maybe we can start going through the files again on Forest and his henchmen.”
“Maybe somebody’ll spot Jordan.” Hutch plodded toward the bathroom.
“It’s just a matter of time, buddy. It’ll all happen eventually.”
“I suppose.” Hutch disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.
CHAPTER 10
Years may come and go,
Here’s one thing I know,
All my life
You’re a friend of mine…
Volumes of essentially useless information poured into the tip line. Farver and Shemanski eventually complained about being glorified secretaries, so Starsky and Hutch took their turns handling the mundane routine of screening the calls. Their careful analysis of Ben Forest’s file as well as his “known associates” didn’t reveal anything of interest. A thorough check of records at New Horizons Real Estate had to be accomplished through Cecile in order not to make it an official investigation. Starsky handled any communications with her, with Hutch happily relinquishing that portion of the task to his partner. Neither were really angry at her, as she had done her best to break it to him gently, and Hutch was the first to admit she was right about him not being ready for a heavy relationship yet. Still, it was understandably awkward to be in touch with her.
Starsky threw himself into the project of decorating the house for Halloween. Despite Hutch’s lack of interest in the holiday, Starsky was loving every minute of carving the three giant pumpkins, two of which sat on the porch, with the forlorn-faced oblong pumpkin taking up residence, much to Hutch’s dismay, on his favorite window seat. Bunches of Indian corn were attached to the front, side and back doors. The crowning touches were courtesy of Rosie Dobey, who was anxious to share with Starsky her new found skill of making “ghosts” by putting big pieces of white sheet over cheap children’s plastic balls and tying them at the “neck,” leaving the remaining fabric to hang loose. To her delight, Starsky spent most of one Sunday on a ladder in the front yard suspending them from the large trees, while she stood on the ground and supervised his efforts. The front yard took on the appearance of a haunted forest when they were finished.
Discovering that the two detectives were only a bike-ride away from her home, Rosie sometimes showed up on a weekend day, and occasionally had visited Starsky after school during his convalescence. She had grown to be a very pretty and intelligent little sixth grader, and Starsky maintained she was better company than most of the adults he knew.
The week before Halloween, the neighborhood “painting party” took place. On a breezy, sunny Saturday morning, the neighborhood watch group plus several other neighbors, Huggy, Nedloe, Elliot, and Minnie showed up to work on the project of painting the house. In return, Starsky and Hutch had a pig roasting in the back yard, which was Huggy’s primary vocation during the paint-a-thon. Wendy was on hand to keep a constant flow of refreshments and snacks going out to the workers. There were a couple kegs of beer and various other snacks, cocktails and party foods in store for the cookout that was to follow, when wives and families of the painting volunteers would arrive to round out the party.
The detectives signed up to take their turn on the watch rotation, barring a conflict with their usual work schedule. In addition to taking a turn at patrolling, they had devoted a few evenings to training the volunteers in some of the basic techniques of patrolling and also given advice on how much to investigate on their own and when to report something suspicious to the police. Their help had earned them the enthusiastic help of the watch participants.
Paul Pomeroy and Starsky had set up stereo speakers in a few windows in strategic locations in the house to pump music out to the painters. Hutch was thoroughly convinced they would probably burn down the house by shorting out all the wiring, but Starsky argued that this was why they’d spent all that money on rewiring the place. With everyone eating Wendy’s ham rolls, small sandwiches, cocktail weenies and chips and dip, intermittently dancing and hamming it up to the music that throbbed out of several windows of the house, it was debatable when the party really started.
Remarkably, by the time dusk was approaching, and the outdoor lanterns were hung at strategic locations in the backyard, the house was painted. To everyone’s amazement, the efforts of over twenty people assaulting the structure from all sides coordinated very well, and the grey house with white trim could finally take its rightful place among the other restored homes of the neighborhood.
Indoors, the contractor had finally finished the structural work on the staircase, and all that remained was to stain the wood to match the house’s original woodwork. The French doors had been stripped, re-stained and hung between the living room and dining room, and the living room and entrance hall. The hardwood floors were polished and a large rug that had been found in the basement boasting an attractive Oriental pattern had been cleaned and used to substitute for carpeting in the living room.
There would be rich burgundy carpeting on the main staircase, beginning with the tread of the first step. Credit cards had been utilized to hang beige tie-back drapes in the living room and scalloped shades in the dining room. The dining room table had been replaced with one found at an estate sale for about half its real value. The kitchen cupboards were to be refinished by Mel, Jim Nedloe, Hutch, and Starsky the next weekend. They’d cut their teeth on staining the French doors and done quite well, so the kitchen was next on the agenda. What had begun as Starsky’s pie-in-the-sky idea of a restored Victorian-era dream house was beginning to take shape, thanks to unfortunate circumstances yielding insurance money, a lot of hard work, and a lot of help from a wonderful group of neighbors and friends.
As soon as they assessed the decorating needs of the second floor and the cesspools of other people’s leftover junk in the attic and basement, the lack of respectable landscaping and the weed-choked lawn, it was obvious they still had miles to go. Somehow, though, that thought didn’t depress Hutch the way it had in the beginning. Starsky had always had a strange love for the house, almost as if it were human, and tinkering with it for a lifetime didn’t seem to bother him. Hutch, on the other hand, had eyed it suspiciously as a time-consuming, money-guzzling monster at the outset. Now, with some of the work completed, and the overwhelmingly peaceful sense of “home” he felt about the place, the thought of doing a little bit here and there for the next several years didn’t worry him at all.
“Quite a party, eh?” Starsky’s voice startled Hutch out of his thoughts as he stood at the kitchen sink, watching the people milling around the backyard.
“I still can’t believe how great they’ve all been to us—we couldn’t have ever gotten all this stuff done this fast on our own.”
“So why don’t you look happier?” Starsky pulled another covered tray of Wendy’s much-in-demand ham rolls out of the refrigerator.
“I’m happy.”
“You’re supposed to smile when you say something like that.” Starsky ate one of the rolls and tossed one in Hutch’s mouth as he opened it to answer. Hutch chuckled a little as he started chewing. “That oughtta make you happy. I think I ate the last tray of these by myself.” The ham, cream cheese, and green onion concoctions had captivated Starsky’s tastebuds all day. “Now answer my question.”
“I was just thinking…did you see Jack Elliot’s wife? She must be due next month.” Kelsey Elliot was indeed extremely pregnant as she waddled around the yard, trying to keep track of her two older children, ages 10 and 12.
“Talk about your afterthoughts,” Starsky said, smiling. “Think Jack planned on that?”
“I don’t know as Kelsey planned on it.” Hutch was still in a reflective mood. “Sandra would have been due about the same time.”
“Hutch, I’m sorry. I never even thought—”
“Don’t apologize, buddy. I’m going to be seeing pregnant women all my life. I can’t let that depress me. It just makes me think so much about her now because the timetable would’ve been about the same.”
“One thing I am sorry about is how I pushed you with Cecile. That one was all my fault and I was way out of line with that. I know we sort of talked about it the other day, but you didn’t have both oars in the water at the time, so now I want to say it when you do.”
“Things would have gone along all right with Cecile if it hadn’t been for that damn photo. So unless you sent that, it’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t ready.”
“She acted real casual about all of it at first, like she was okay with just being friends for awhile. All of a sudden when she got that photo, things weren’t moving fast enough and she was unnerved about the heroin thing.”
“Looks like the Dobeys just got here,” Starsky said, leaning past Hutch to look out the kitchen window. “Come on, pal. Let’s go enjoy our own party, huh?” Starsky picked up the tray of snacks and led the way back outside to the festive cookout.
* * * *
Paul Pomeroy couldn’t wait very long after dinner to start recruiting musicians and planning some sort of musical program for the evening. The crowd was already in a musical mood, since the radio had pumped out tunes for some dancing, and even an impromptu sing-a-long, complete with a Motown-style (though pathetically uncoordinated) dance routine from Starsky, Jim Nedloe, Mel Pomeroy, and Dobey on “The Way You Do The Things You Do.”
Hutch was coerced into performing a few numbers, and soon had the crowd clapping and singing along with “Black Bean Soup” among others. Starsky joined him before long, and they did an acoustic version of “Stuck in the Middle with You,” which actually summed up their lives pretty well. Paul was happy to provide some back-up while Hutch took a break, and Starsky ran through a few of the Jim Croce songs he liked so well. Hutch didn’t say anything, but he had opted to take his leave of the sing-a-long group to avoid hearing Starsky’s rendition of “Time in a Bottle,” which could usually get him misty on a good day. He wasn’t spared completely, as Starsky’s voice wafted in the open kitchen window. He was relieved when Starsky relinquished the singing duties to Paul, who began a series of well-known folk tunes to keep the sing-a-long going.
He noted with some satisfaction that the main staircase was very close to being fully restored. With nothing left to do but the staining and carpeting of the treads, the house would be back to normal before long. He paused at the foot of the stairs to take in the view. A chill ran up and down his spine when the thought of what must have run through Starsky’s mind the last time he made the trip up those steps, being dragged by the arms, stretching his battered body until tears came from the pain, and the impending threat of something Hutch didn’t even want to think about. It’s very admirable you still want to live here, Starsk. Maybe you should’ve asked me if I can get past what happened here…
He turned away and went back outside to join the party.
* * * *
Starsky turned over again and spent more time staring at the pattern of leaves in the moonlight rippling across the ceiling. He’d analyzed himself forward and backwards trying to figure out why he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the food, and he wasn’t particularly upset about anything—at least not any more than usual. The threat of exposure of Hutch’s drug situation was always there, nagging at the back of his mind. Arnold Mercer’s squeaky voice and beer breath was there too, along with words that were so indelibly stamped in his memory that they wouldn’t let him go. Things so sickening that he’d been embarrassed to even tell Hutch.
That’s a good one. Street-smart homicide detective and you don’t think he’s heard stuff like that before? Truth is, I haven’t heard some of that stuff before. Pray to God I never have to hear it again. But it’s always there…and there was never a doubt that Mercer planned to carry all of it out with an audience watching… Oh, God, and I wonder why I have insomnia… Dear God, please, just one night I don’t have to replay all that in my mind before I go to sleep… Mercer has power over me as long as I let him… Shrinks. Useless advice for $100 an hour… Why did I even bother to let anything slip when I talked to the department’s shrink? Why did I mention Mercer at all? Cost me another session a week later, when I felt just as lousy and scared and humiliated and messed up…only this time I knew enough to play the game, to lie like a horse thief so he’d sign the right form that put me on active duty.
Depressed at sleep eluding him for over two hours, Starsky finally got out of bed, making the two steps expertly without thinking. He pulled on a robe and slipped down the back stairs to the kitchen. There were dirty dishes everywhere, since neither of them had felt like cleaning up at two in the morning and none of their guests seemed inclined to clean up after themselves.
Ham rolls disappeared first, then the remains of a batch of pasta salad brought over by Edith Dobey. He was glad the Dobeys were late. Edith’s Italian pasta salad, with pieces of pepperoni and black olives and onion and Italian dressing was one of his favorites, and only her late arrival had spared this little clump left over for his personal pleasure. Normally she found her bowl cleaned to the bottom at every party.
Wendy’s brownies capped off the gastric nightmare, two in rapid succession, chased by milk, which seemed more appropriate than the cola he’d been chasing the rest of it with. Burping, he tidied up after his little snack and headed to the living room to look for the newspaper. He was full now but no more sleepy than before.
The staircase.
Starsky paused alongside it, and finally walked around to the foot of it. He’d never used the main staircase since he was dragged up the steps that night. Ain’t you got no decency? Mercer’s mocking voice was back again. Worse than that, his hands were back. Traveling where they wanted, voice working with them, describing what was coming… If he had been living alone, he’d have taken another shower, just to get rid of a feeling he couldn’t put into words—like maybe the pounding water would wash away the memories… If Hutch noticed he spent twice his normal time in the shower lately, he hadn’t said anything. He probably didn’t notice. Even then it wasn’t like Starsky exactly hogged the bathroom, and there was always the one downstairs if he got sick of waiting.
Nice try, Starsky. Think about how many bathrooms there are in the house and the practical aspect of the fact that you’re crazy—how long Hutch has to wait for the bathroom. But you can’t get away from Mercer and what he said and wanted to do, what he already did…that’s his legacy to you for the rest of your life, man. Won’t ever go away… See a shrink would be most people’s advice. Tried that. How in hell can I tell a stranger the things he said to me when I can’t even tell Hutch? And can a shrink turn back time and make it not happen? Uh-uh. So what good is it? I ask a question and he answers it with another. And I pay $100 for that—or the department does but then they know I’m nuts and put me on desk duty for six months while I contemplate my navel once a week with a therapist. Not an option.
“Starsk?” Hutch appeared at the hallway railing above where Starsky stood at the foot of the stairs. “Thought I heard you moving around. Everything okay?”
“Sorry I woke you,” Starsky responded, still staring at the steps and not Hutch.
“That’s okay. Not like we have to be at work in the morning—I guess it is morning, huh?” Hutch came down the uncarpeted steps, tying his robe. “What’s the matter, buddy?”
“Nothing. I just…I couldn’t sleep, so I came down for a snack.”
“How long have you been standing here?”
“I don’t…know. I was thinking, and then…I guess I just ended up standin’ here to do it.”
“You wanna talk?” Hutch joined him at the foot of the stairs.
“‘Bout what?”
“Starsky, I know you’re still not okay with everything that happened. Give me some credit for having eyes—and knowing you.”
“I don’t think I wanna get into this now.”
“Then when? Or with whom? Look, I hear you at night, and I know how long you’re in the shower and I know why.”
“You hear me at night? And what are you talking about with the shower?”
“You talk in your sleep sometimes. Don’t even ask me to explain myself about the shower because we both know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m sorry—about wakin’ you up and hogging the shower.”
“Starsky, for God’s sake—do you think I care about a few ounces of water or a couple minutes of lost sleep? I want you to let me help you.”
“Help me what? Forget? I can’t, all right!!” Starsky yelled back him, feeling tears welling up in his eyes. His throat was nearly closed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I wasn’t raped. Why am I still hanging on to this…feeling like I was?”
“Because in a way, you were. The physical act didn’t happen, thank God, but you were put through all the preliminary terror, the inappropriate touching—to quote the law—and the helplessness, and—”
“That’s the worst. Waiting and knowing what’s coming and not…not being…not able…” He seemed at a loss for the right words, and hesitant to say any more.
“Hey, it’s okay, buddy.” Hutch moved toward his partner laid a hand on his shoulder. “Part of this is my fault, Starsk. I didn’t handle it well, hearing what they did to you…look at how I reacted to Norton’s statement. God, I put it on you to comfort me about what happened. How in hell were you supposed to feel like you could talk to me about it? You’ve been trying so hard to hold up for me, to keep me together with this damn drug situation hanging over my head. Who’s holdin’ up for you, huh?” Hutch asked gently, sliding his arm around Starsky’s shoulders. “I’ve been so damned wrapped up in whether or not somebody finds out about the addiction that I haven’t even taken the time to find out if you were getting over this.”
“Don’t call it that,” Starsky asserted. “It wasn’t an addiction. You were forced-”
“And they got me hooked. Technically—”
“NO. It was an…aftermath of torture. You weren’t an addict, Hutch. That makes it sound like it was your fault, like you were on it longer than you were.”
“And here we go again. This isn’t about me, buddy. Come on. We’re going to sit down and talk this out.” Hutch started leading him toward the TV room.
“What if I…can’t?”
“There’s no rush, Starsk. But I think we both know you need to get this off your chest.” Hutch sat on the end of the couch, and Starsky sat on the edge of the opposite end.
“Cold in here,” Starsky stated, shivering a little.
“We can turn up the heat.”
“Yeah, then when we get the utility bill we’ll have to give up groceries for two weeks. I’m the one who said let’s turn the heat way down and dress warmer.”
“You’d have said anything to get this house, buddy,” Hutch responded with great affection in his voice.
“Guess you’re right.” Starsky smiled slightly.
“Wanna share?” Hutch had pulled the throw off the back of the couch and covered himself, leaving a more than ample section of the fabric for his partner.
“Yeah.” Starsky smiled again, broadly this time, and moved to the cushion next to Hutch. Shoulder to shoulder and tucked under the blanket, Starsky felt the worst of the shivers subsiding. He followed Hutch’s lead as the other slid down in the cushions and rested his feet on the coffee table.
“Here we are, livin’ like kings in this fancy big house,” Hutch quipped. The picture of the two of them huddled together under a blanket in the small back bedroom of the house on Starsky’s old couch struck them both funny. Before long, both were laughing, thinking of how ridiculous they looked, and how utterly absurd their whole situation was, living in what amounted to a small mansion but unable to afford to turn up the heat.
“I still like it, though,” Starsky responded as he got his breath back.
“Me too. Maybe we could get promoted or something—then we could have heat and everything,” Hutch suggested, still chuckling a little.
“We’ve talked about that before. You thinking again about taking the Lieutenant’s test?”
“Nope. You?”
“Uh-uh.” Starsky settled more comfortably. There was no need to reiterate the reasons. Promotions would inevitably split up their working partnership, possibly take them off the streets, and neither one was pleased with either part of that equation. Pushing papers would be depressing. Pushing papers alone would be unthinkable.
“Talk to me, Starsk.” Hutch’s head was resting on the back of the couch, and he didn’t move his gaze from the ceiling. Somehow, that made it easier to start. Once Starsky began, he found it impossible to stop. It amazed him how easily it all poured out now, when he felt so remarkably secure. He found the voice to say the words that had made up his nightmares, to repeat to Hutch everything that was said, from the horrible derisions against his religion to Mercer’s threats. Hutch listened quietly, only occasionally asking a gentle question of clarification. When he was finished, he still had the shower issue to confront, but he hoped Hutch would let that go for the time being. Recovery wasn’t coming easily from this one, and he needed Hutch’s patience more than anything else.
“I don’t want to talk anymore tonight,” Starsky concluded, keeping his downcast eyes focused on the brightly-colored throw that covered them.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day—or a night. No need to handle everything at once, babe. I’m glad you told me the whole story.” Hutch turned his head toward Starsky.
“Me too.” Starsky returned the look and smiled a little.
“You’re looking me in the eyes again, buddy. I’m real glad to see that.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” Starsky’s brow wrinkled a little.
“Since all this happened, you almost never looked me in the eyes when we talk. It was as if you were avoiding eye contact with me.”
“Maybe I was,” Starsky admitted, turning back to stare straight ahead. “I was…I don’t know…ashamed, I guess.”
“Of what?”
“That I didn’t fight back more. When we got upstairs, I just didn’t have it in me anymore. And I…I was afraid…of getting beaten up more. Since the shooting, I…I sometimes don’t know how…sturdy everything is. I didn’t know what would happen if they kept at me much longer. It hurt so bad by then…I didn’t know how much…damage…”
“Starsky, you fought back a hell of a lot more than most people would have, and probably more than you should have. You earned most of your injuries fighting back. You’ve got nothing to apologize for, buddy. You sure as hell don’t have anything to be ashamed of.” Hutch smiled slightly. “As a matter of fact, Norton referred to you as the ‘toughest SOB he ever saw.’” Starsky actually laughed a little at that. “I also believe he used the term ‘wild animal’ to describe trying to subdue you. You gave those bastards a real run for their money, pal. You didn’t go down easy. But there’s not a lot of glory in that if it gets you smashed up.”
“I s’pose not.” Starsky looked back at Hutch. “But I didn’t want you to think that meant that I…that I wanted it or something. That’s what Mercer said, right before Norton started talking about the time. He said ‘look at him now—not fightin’ back. He wants it.’ I didn’t, Hutch. I just couldn’t see any way out,” Starsky finished in a shaky voice.
“I know that, babe. I never would think you did, anymore than any other victim wants it, no matter how much their attacker might want to say they do to fuel his perverted fantasies. There are also people who survive rape because they finally give in when they’re overpowered and don’t incite their attackers into killing them. That doesn’t make those people guilty of something. And it probably makes the people who love them damned happy because even if they’ve suffered, at least they’re alive.”
Hutch paused, then found Starsky’s hand under the throw and squeezed it. “At least that’s how I would’ve felt. Not like you asked for it or like you were less than what you are because something terrible happened to you against your will. And if you’d had to give up fighting to save your life, and that had been the consequence…” Hutch paused, seemingly choked up himself now, “I’d’ve thanked you for living through it and staying with me instead of antagonizing them and making me go through losing my best friend.” He felt a crushing pressure back from the hand he was holding. Starsky was mopping at his eyes with the other hand.
“You mean that? You’re not just…tryin’ to make me feel better?”
“I really mean that, Starsk.”
“Then it’s okay,” Starsky said, his voice a little strained with the tears he was successfully controlling now.
“What is?”
“All of it.” He looked at Hutch in that matter-of-fact way he had, like the answer was so simple anyone ought to be able to figure it out. “Because I don’t feel like a coward anymore.”
“My God, Starsky, you never were. Not for a second.”
“I guess I know that now. I just felt like…I gave up. I let them…I let Mercer…” He paused. “But now, I…I guess I can see some sense to it, like maybe I knew what I was doin’ on some level, even if I couldn’t think real clearly right then.”
“You’ve got damned good instincts for survival, buddy. That’s what kicked in. You told me outside of Schoemacher’s house one night that you were picking your fights a little more wisely. And that’s precisely what you were doing then. Fighting an impossible battle and incurring major casualties just on the principle of the thing is a waste of lives—even in a war. On your own individual scale, incurring more severe injuries or even death to stop something you ultimately couldn’t stop would have been just foolish, not courageous. You were too smart to get yourself killed…thank God.”
“I don’t know how smart it was…”
“Plenty smart. Plus, maybe your grandmother was onto something about you being one of God’s chosen people. By some wonderful miracle, it didn’t happen.”
“I prayed so hard, Hutch. I never prayed like that—except when you were sick or after…Forest, or lookin’ for you when you were in that damned canyon.”
“And somebody up there heard you.”
“I’m really tired.” Starsky’s head drooped over to one side on the back of the couch. It seemed like he was already partially asleep.
“Me too, partner,” Hutch agreed, settling in to nap right there on the couch. With Sunday off looming ahead, they could afford to catch up on some rest as the early hours of morning crept up on them.
* * * *
After breakfast, they began the grisly task of cleaning up after the previous night’s party. They flipped a coin to assign duties, with Hutch taking the yard and Starsky starting in on the mass of dirty dishes in the sink. Unfortunately, there was no putting this off, as tomorrow’s work schedule looked pretty formidable, and this might be their last stretch of free time for awhile. Discouraged by the lack of success in tracking Jordan, they had opted to personally follow up on the calls to the hotline that had been scrapped after careful analysis. They found Jordan in the first place following up a long shot, so it seemed appropriate to try it again.
When the phone rang, Starsky picked it up with dripping hands and wedged it between his head and shoulder while he kept working.
“Dave, hi, it’s Wendy.”
“Hey, Wend, what’s up?”
“Did you survive last night?”
“Oh, yeah.” Just barely, but then I guess she meant the party.
“I thought if you were free maybe we could go take in a movie this afternoon.”
“Sounds like a good idea. We’re just getting things cleaned up here…” He backed away from the sink to look at the clock. “How about I pick you up around two? We could probably make the three o’clock show at the Showcase.”
“Great. See you then.”
Starsky hung up and looked back out the window. Hutch was making pretty good inroads on the yard, and the pile of dishes had shrunken considerably. He didn’t foresee any obstacles to making his two o’clock date with Wendy.
* * * *
Hutch wasn’t saddened to have an afternoon to himself to catch up on some reading. The only drawback of living with Starsky had been a backlog of reading materials. While Starsky had always liked to read, he didn’t seem as inclined to do it since the incident with Mercer and his fellow goons. Maybe long periods of silence and solitude weren’t what he needed at the moment, and Hutch finally concluded that he was glad to let his quiet time slip a little if it was helping his partner recover.
If one ever truly recovers from something like that. I wanted him to open up, tell me everything. Now that he has, I can see why he was losing it. And I agreed with the DA that we could do without the sexual assault charge. Starsky’s convinced it was still a sound tactical move. So why do I feel like an insensitive shithead for going along with it? Of course, testifying to all of this in open court wouldn’t have been a walk in the park, either. And we did find Norton and the others through Mercer. The lead on Curtis came through Norton, so ultimately, it was a sound strategy. But sometimes the principle of the thing is just as important…
Hutch relinquished the comfort of the wingback chair he occupied near the fireplace in the library. If old Mr. Oliver hadn’t left this furniture, we’d probably have moved the lawn chairs in here. Last time I let you do the budgeting, Starsky. He picked up the phone and dialed Huggy’s number.
“Quite a party last night, man,” Huggy commented.
“Thanks for doing the pig duty, Hug.”
“No problemo.”
“Hug, you’ve got some friends in the state pen, right?”
“Man, Hutch, you really know how to hurt a guy,” Huggy responded in feigned indignation.
“I’m not kidding around.”
“A few guys from the old neighborhood, yeah.”
“You know anybody who could put a word out on the prison grapevine?”
“Sure.”
“Good. I want you to drop the word that Arnold Mercer, who just got transferred there last week, is AC/DC.”
“Hutch, are you sure you—”
“We had to dismiss a charge to get some information from him, Hug.” A beat of silence. “It was a sexual assault charge.”
“In Starsky’s case?” Huggy asked, shocked.
“Yeah. He wasn’t raped—it never went that far, but Mercer really terrorized him with it. I had to agree to dropping the charge, since it didn’t go all the way and we needed the bargaining power. But I want Mercer known for what he is.”
“A little helpin’ of street justice?”
“Something like that.”
“Consider it done. You know, that’s going to make things pretty hot for him on the inside.”
“He made things pretty hot for Starsky. I…I know this probably isn’t the right thing to do, but I can’t help it. I feel like I have to do…something.“
“Tell you what. I’ll sit on this for a bit, and if you still want me to put the word out in, say, a coupla weeks, you let me know. You gotta cool down, man. Think this through. I mean, sure, you’re not doin’ anything direct to Mercer, but you gotta know what it’ll mean for him on the inside. And you said Starsky wasn’t—”
“It was only for a lack of time, Hug. He was all ready to get started. The jerk watching the clock pulled the plug on it—thought it would take too long. He was literally saved by the bell.”
“I’m still gonna wait on this, man. Hutch—this ain’t you. I can always go ahead, but I can’t ever take it back, if you should change your mind.”
“Okay. Do what you want, Hug. Thanks.”
Hutch hung up the phone and went to sit on the window seat with Starsky’s sad-faced pumpkin. He felt a sick heaviness in the pit of his stomach. He’d never pulled strings like this to indulge a revenge fantasy, but after hearing a minute-by-minute, literally blow-by-blow description of Starsky’s ordeal, he couldn’t stand the thought of any part of it going unavenged. Starsky was strong, and he had bounced back quite well from the whole ordeal, but there were still those innermost feelings of fear and shame that he had only confided to Hutch the previous night. It was safe to assume they would never be confided to a therapist, so pressuring Starsky into counseling would have been pointless. Starsky had laid them all at Hutch’s feet, and now Hutch felt he should do something to make it better somehow.
The doorbell shook him out of his morose thoughts. He inclined his head out the window, and saw Cecile’s Cadillac parked at the curb. She was one of the last people he wanted to see. Figuring she probably saw him sitting in the window, he resigned himself to answering the door. When he swung it open, Cecile stood before him in jeans and a beige sweater, her hair hanging loosely about her shoulders. It was the antithesis of the strait-laced professional he usually saw.
“Hi, Ken. I’m sorry to drop in on you like this, but I think we should talk.”
“Come in.” Hutch stood aside as she entered the house.
“The house looks beautiful—I can’t get over how lovely it looks with the new porch and the paint job.” Her face fell slightly when she turned toward the stairs.
“The contractor just got done rebuilding it. It’ll be stained and re-finished next week. Mel Pomeroy next door found another old place with French doors, so those have already been re-finished and hung.”
“The doors are perfect. I’m sure the staircase is going to be beautiful too. Looks like he did a fine job reproducing it.”
“Starsky found an old picture in the attic that showed the original staircase.”
“How is he?”
“Starsky? He’s just about back to full speed now. He’s a quick healer, fortunately.”
“I’m glad. I really like Dave. I was so sorry to hear about that whole incident.”
“Cecile, I thought we pretty much covered everything we had to say to each other at Tony’s. Unless this is related to the case.”
“No, it’s not related to the case.” She looked toward the living room. “Could we possibly sit down a moment?”
“I’m sorry. Please.” He gestured toward the living room. The lapse in courtesy wasn’t entirely accidental, but now it seemed petty.
“This is personal.” She sat on the edge of the ornate sofa in front of one of the large front windows. Hutch occupied a nearby chair. “I…I made a mistake.”
“About…?”
“When I saw that photo of you, it brought back a lot of…frightening memories for me. It made me face something again that I’ve had some success in putting out of my mind, at least recently.”
“I’m sorry you had to get involved in all that.”
“I was very wrong to blame you for what happened to you back then. To imply somehow that you would lapse back into an addiction you didn’t take on voluntarily…it was very insensitive of me.”
“I appreciate what you’re saying, but apologies really aren’t necessary. You made a decision. You have a right to see or not see anyone you choose.”
“But that’s just the point…I ran scared, Ken. To be very truthful with you, I’ve missed you in the last couple of weeks. I know I made all these speeches about not wanting to be friends, but I underestimated how much I enjoyed that—even if it doesn’t move beyond that.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I really feel silly about the way I…said things. I was pushy.”
“No you weren’t. I’ve been, well, maybe stand-offish is the word. I know you were right about one thing—I’m not ready for anything heavy. Not this soon after Sandra. I completely understand if you’re not interested in hanging around with me. I’m not real good company at the moment.”
“On the contrary. You were great company. That’s what I miss. All the things we used to talk about…we have so much in common.” She smiled a little uneasily. “Do you think we could just kind of forget everything I said that day and pretend it didn’t happen?”
“No. You know about…the heroin. And I know about your past now, and I don’t think, as friends, we want to forget that ever happened. Maybe we just know each other a little better now.”
“Does that mean if I invited you over for dinner some night this week, you might accept?”
“I might,” Hutch responded, smiling.
“I know—why don’t you invite Dave and Wendy to join us? She made all that food for our picnic—I’d like to do something nice for her. And I’d like a chance to visit with Dave again, when he wasn’t being all abrupt and professional because I just dumped his partner.”
“Sounds great,” Hutch said, laughing a little. “Our schedule could get a little dicey this week.”
“What else is new? How about Tuesday night? If something comes up, I guess Wendy and I can have dinner and you guys can eat cold leftovers.”
“Gee, thanks, Cecile. I don’t know when I’ve felt more needed.” He was still smiling. “I’ll ask Starsky, and he can get a hold of Wendy. As a matter of fact,” he looked at his watch. It was five-thirty. “He’s probably over there right now. Kill two birds with one stone.” Hutch went to the phone on the small table in the entry area and dialed Wendy’s number. He had seen it posted by the kitchen phone for several weeks now, so it was emblazoned on his memory.
* * * *
Wendy carried in two bottles of cola and joined Starsky where he sat cross-legged on the floor. Having found another willing monopoly partner, Starsky was determined to polish up his somewhat defunct skills on the game.
“You still owe me $1,000.” She handed him the pop.
“I offered to give you my utilities and Atlantic Avenue.”
“That’s okay. I’ll figure out some way for you to work off your debt later,” she said, smiling a little evilly. The ringing of the phone froze her crawl toward Starsky in its tracks.
“Great timing,” he said sarcastically, grinning a little. Wendy sat on her couch and picked up the phone.
“Hello?” She waited while the caller spoke. “Hang on a minute.” She held the phone out to Starsky, none too pleasantly. “It’s for you,” she said in an exasperated tone.
“Oh.” He took the phone and, assuming by her irritated demeanor that it must be the precinct calling, barked his own response. “Starsky.”
“Starsk, I’m really sorry. Sounds like I called at a bad time.”
“No, that’s okay. What’s up?” He glanced up at Wendy, a bit puzzled why Hutch would evoke such a terse response from her.
“Cecile’s here, and we had a chance to talk things over…she invited us to dinner Tuesday night—she wanted you to bring Wendy, so I thought since you were both there, this would be a good time to check with her.”
“Sure. Hang on.” Starsky moved the phone away from his head slightly. “You free for dinner Tuesday—with Hutch and Cecile?”
“I thought they broke up.”
“I guess things are looking better. Whaddya say?”
“I can’t Tuesday.”
“Oh. Okay.” He went back to the phone. “Sorry, buddy. It’s a no-go. Wendy can’t.”
“Cecile’s just motioning to me to ask you.”
“Oh, sure, I can. She gonna want a third party there?”
“She said she’d like a chance to visit with you again. Okay?”
“Sure. That’s fine. Whatever you set up’s okay with me.”
“Great. Talk to ya later, pal.” The connection was broken, and Starsky handed Wendy the phone.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“I’ve gotta hand it to him, his record is perfect—flawless and unbroken.”
“Meaning what?” Starsky asked, the irritation beginning to seep into his voice.
“Meaning that I have never spent an entire date alone with you that we haven’t seen or talked to Hutch. When I visited you in the hospital, I had to make an appointment with Hutch. When I visited you at home, he called or stopped by the house every time I was there, as if you weren’t capable of existing without him for more than two hours at a time. Suddenly, what was supposed to be a romantic picnic for two turned into a foursome—without even asking me—and every time we’ve been together, he’s called you or you’ve called him. You even turned me down to come to my folks’ house for dinner and meet my brother—who’s only here about once a year—because Hutch was ‘having a bad day.’ He wasn’t sick, he wasn’t between life and death—he was just depressed. And you drop everything to sit and hold his head.”
“Hutch is my partner, my best friend—what’d you think I’d do if he needed me?”
“Tell him to get a life of his own, maybe.”
“Maybe you’re not real clear on what he’s been through in the last several months.” Starsky unfolded and stood up, hands on hips, ready for a fight. If Wendy really wanted to open this can of worms, he was damn well going to close it.
“His girlfriend died. I know. And I’m sorry. But quite frankly, I’m surprised he noticed.” She stood up also now.
“And what the hell does that mean?”
“When would he have time? Besides, he’s already got a doting wife looking after him. My only mistake was trying to break up the marriage!”
“You—” Starsky covered his mouth, literally, and took a deep breath. His mother had instilled in him a certain respect for women, and the word that was coming next would have violated everything she’d ever taught him. “I have nothing more to say to you.” He picked up his jacket off the chair and headed for the door.
“Oh that’s right—run home to Hutch. Well, if Cecile wants to date a twosome, that’s her prerogative. I like to take it one at a time.”
“Don’t worry. You sure as hell won’t be put in a position to worry about it again.” He slammed the door behind him.
* * * *
Starsky was still fuming when he pulled the Torino into driveway and stopped with a squeal of brakes. He noticed Cecile’s car, belatedly, and was sorry he’d made such a dramatic entrance. He let himself in the side door and started up the back staircase.
“Starsk? That you?”
No, it’s Jack the Ripper, Starsky thought angrily. Why punish Hutch when you’re mad at Wendy?
“Yeah. Hi, Cecile,” he shouted from where he stood.
“Hi, Dave,” she called back.
“I’ll be upstairs. I, uh, I don’t feel too good. Something I ate.” He continued up the stairs without waiting for an answer.
Predictably, within less than five minutes, he heard Hutch’s footsteps on the stairs. Starsky was still pacing his room, trying to work off his anger.
“Starsk? What’s wrong?”
“I told you.”
“Yeah, right. You’re pacing too fast to be sick and you look fine. Now level with me.”
“You’ve got company.”
“Cecile’ll wait for a minute.”
“Look, I just need a little time to cool off, okay?” Starsky finally stopped pacing and faced his partner.
“Okay. Everything’s all right, though?”
“Yeah, fine,” Starsky answered, a little exasperated. Hutch nodded and went back downstairs.
Cecile stayed another half hour or so, and then Starsky watched her large car pull away from the curb. He’d taken up residence in Hutch’s usual spot on the window seat in the library, watching daylight turn to dusk, lighting his pumpkin as the darkness deepened. He still didn’t turn on the lights in the library.
“So are you in here or is it just me and the pumpkin?” Hutch asked from the doorway, where little yellow light from the hall spilled into the room.
“Yeah, I’m here,” Starsky replied sullenly.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” Hutch sat on the opposite side of the curve of the window seat.
“Not particularly.”
“You never let me off the hook that easily.”
“Guess not,” Starsky said through a little snort of a laugh. “Wendy and I are finished.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Nothing. It just didn’t work out.”
“Starsky, I wasn’t born yesterday. You don’t just suddenly decide to stop seeing somebody for no good reason.”
“She’s too possessive.”
“Really?”
“Well, she’s possessive and she’s jealous, and—”
“She was upset that I called you, right?” He didn’t wait for Starsky’s admission or denial. “I heard her on the phone today, and I know she was a little less than thrilled to see me the other day when she came over.”
“You live here, Hutch. If she didn’t wanna see you, she shoulda stayed home.”
“The point is, you live here too, and if she wanted to see you, she had to get me in the bargain. Judging by how she sounded today, she’s probably sick of having your partner in the deal.”
“Then she’s better off hitting the road because that’s how it is.”
“I would understand if you wanted more space—if you wanted me to back off so you could—”
“Could what? Spend my life listening to little barbed remarks every time we did something together? No thanks. Look, Wendy just wasn’t the right choice for me. If she can’t accept our friendship as part of the package deal, it wouldn’t last anyway, so there’s no point in my trying to smooth it over with her.”
“I’m just trying to tell you that I understand if you want me to stay out of the way when you’re with her. I only called today because you were both there, and I figured it was a good time to find out if you could both make it.”
“Don’t start apologizing to me. You didn’t do anything wrong.” Starsky stared out the window a minute. “And don’t you dare stay out of my way, either.” He nudged Hutch’s knee across the space between them with a stocking foot.
“I am sorry about Wendy, buddy. I know you liked her.”
“And once again, the same sterling Starsky taste in women that brought you Rosey Malone and Kira brings you Wendy the wonderful.”
“Let’s not get started on bad taste in women, pal. I really don’t want to relive that history.”
“You picked Sandy.”
“And you picked Terry. Maybe there’s hope for us yet.” Hutch laughed softly.
“Tell me about Cecile,” Starsky probed, still staring out the window. Lights were coming on in the various houses as the night wore on. The teenagers across the street with all the rock posters on their walls had lit up their bedrooms. The girl’s drapes were quickly closed, but her younger brother didn’t seem to care about such details, plunking down at his desk and dejectedly opening a book. Sunday night homework. “That’s the worst kind.” Starsky was startled to have voiced the thought out loud.
“What?”
“Sunday night homework. All that stuff you leave ’til the last minute and then your folks come down on you about mid-afternoon Sunday ’cause you haven’t done anything.”
“I think mine came down on me a little earlier than Sunday afternoon.”
“Probably Friday afternoon.” Starsky laughed a little.
“Actually—”
“No,” Starsky replied, in complete disbelief. “No kid does homework Friday afternoon.”
“One did.” Hutch raised his hand with a slight grin. “That was the first thing out of my mother’s mouth when I got in the back door. ‘Better get at that homework so you have some free time this weekend.’ Just one day I wanted to throw those damn books out the window and do something fun.” Hutch seemed to have started watching the bent head of the neighbor boy now.
“Homework on Friday…man, that’s child abuse.”
“It is, huh?” Hutch responded, laughing a little.
“I think I’d rather be beaten.”
“It wasn’t that bad, Starsk. I never had to do what he’s doing. I was usually at the movies right about now.”
“Or jetting around in Jack Mitchell’s $40,000 sports car, right?”
“Wealth has its moments, I guess. But that car’s probably been sold for scrap by now, and I wouldn’t’ve bought a house with Jack Mitchell. The important stuff doesn’t come with the big price tags on it. Hey—I’m hungry. I suppose you ate at Wendy’s place.”
“Mostly junk at the movie. We didn’t have anything at her place. What’d you have in mind?”
“Nothing special. I just thought we could fix some dinner.”
“Okay. Anything down there to fix?” Starsky asked, unfolding from his position on the window seat and heading for the door. Hutch was close behind him.
“There’s some hamburger in there, and a box of that mix with the cheese sauce and macaroni in it.” Hutch watched the predictable pleased reaction the presence of something like Hamburger Helper evoked in his partner.
CHAPTER 11
And when you push from behind
I know I can
Cover a mountain with the palm of my hand…
Oh, babe, you can make history young again,
You could rewrite it, you could decide
The things that should or shouldn’t have been,
You could look at me in the scheme of things,
Oh, babe, you could make history young again.
Hutch had been looking very forward to Tuesday evening. He hadn’t seen or talked to Cecile since their reconciliation on Sunday, and he was anxious to get what he considered a promising friendship back on track.
“Starsk! Come on, we’re gonna be late!” he called down the hall toward Starsky’s room. The dark head poked out the door. Starsky was in his jeans and an old sweatshirt. “You’re not dressed yet.”
“I’m not goin’. I think I’m gettin’ sick.” The voice was tinged with a distinct nasal quality. Hutch made his way down the hall, and predictably, laid a hand on Starsky’s forehead.
“You’re right. You’re warm, buddy. I’ll call Cecile.”
“What for?”
“You’ve got a pretty significant fever, there, Starsk.”
“I’ll be okay. I’m just gonna take some aspirin and lie down.”
“But you won’t drink any fluids if I leave you to your own devices, and you can’t just ignore a fever like that.”
“Look, I’ll go downstairs, get a big pitcher of ice water and put it on the nightstand, okay?”
“You go lie down. I’ll get the water. And the thermometer. Don’t argue with me.” Hutch waved a finger briefly in Starsky’s direction as he started down the hall toward the back stairs. Ever since the shooting, Hutch had been on needles and pins every time Starsky got the sniffles or indigestion. Starsky fervently wished Hutch would relax and accept that he wasn’t made of china on the inside anymore. The bullet wounds had healed, the repair work had been successful. But Hutch’s tendency to parent his partner had only increased as he seemed to perceive Starsky’s health as more fragile than it was.
Starsky curled upon his bed, dreading the next few days of work. Having depleted all sick and vacation leave, unless he passed out on the floor, he’d have to be on the job. A sinus-rattling sneeze resounded through the room as Hutch arrived with the water. Never one to worry about catching whatever Starsky had, he sat on the edge of the bed and stuck the thermometer in his friend’s mouth.
“I’m tellin’ ya, Hutch, go on or—”
“Shut up while that thing’s in your mouth. Honestly. Worse than a kid.” Hutch checked his watch to start timing the reading.
“Yulknce,” Starsky mumbled.
“What?”
“You look nice,” he enunciated, holding the thermometer out of his mouth momentarily. “Will you please just get going so you’re not late?”
“The only thing holding me up is your big mouth that can’t stay shut long enough to get your temperature taken.” After the instrument had been dutifully re-inserted, Hutch smiled slightly. “Thanks. It’s new.” He fidgeted a little with the lapel of the wheat and brown tweed sportcoat.
“Shmstbspcl,” Starsky managed. Noting Hutch’s blank expression, he started to take the thermometer out again but his hand was intercepted and pushed down.
“Quiet.” Hutch checked his watch, was silent a few more seconds and then took out the thermometer to check it again.
“I said she must be special—new jacket and everything.”
“She’s special and you’re sick. This is 102 degrees. You think I’m going anywhere?”
“Yup. To Cecile’s. You can call me a time or two and see if I’m still breathing if that’ll make ya feel better. I got water, I got aspirin, and I got a telephone—I’ll call you if I need anything, okay?” He noted the coming objection and intercepted it. “I know the last time you went out, all hell broke loose. That’s not gonna happen again. The doors are locked, Mercer and company are behind bars, and I can take care of myself. Now go.”
“Curtis isn’t. Behind bars, I mean.”
“No, Curtis isn’t. But we haven’t heard from him lately either. Hey, I know all the neighbors around here, the watch is out tonight—I think it’s Mel and Kurt from across the street. Will ya just go have some fun?”
“Okay. But just long enough for dinner.”
“That’ll really be nice. Go over there, throw down your food and then dump her. Classy, Hutch. She oughtta love that.”
“I’m going to get you a cool cloth. Here. Take these.” He handed Starsky two aspirin and poured a glass of the ice water. Starsky did as he was told. Hutch hurried down the hall to the bathroom and returned with a cool, damp washcloth.
Starsky had to admit that as lousy as he felt, he liked being taken care of and babied a little. But Hutch and Cecile had already had one false start, and he had strongly believed all along that his partner and the attractive brunette were a good match.
“How’s that feel, buddy?” Hutch was bathing his face slowly, and it felt like the heat was being sucked right into the washcloth. He involuntarily raised his chin a little so Hutch could get his neck while he was at it. “Pretty good, huh?” There was a distinct smile in the voice. Starsky opened his eyes finally and smiled back.
“Yeah, pretty good. Now go.”
“Starsky—”
“GO.”
“Okay. I won’t be late. And if you feel any worse, you call me. And I’ve left the aspirin here—and don’t forget to keep drinking some water. Check your temperature again in about an hour—”
“Got it. Now get out of here.” Starsky shoved at Hutch, encouraging him to stand up from his perch on the edge of the bed. If his long legs hadn’t been able to reach the floor, he might have fallen off the high bed.
“Okay. I can still call her—”
“GO. There’s the door. Don’t let it hit you in the ass. Now GO.”
“You rest now,” Hutch admonished as he hesitantly made his way out the door, and finally, Starsky heard the footsteps as he headed down the back stairs toward the side entrance. The door shut decisively, loud in the silent house.
First solo flight since it happened. Why don’t I feel quite as confident as I played I did? I’m sick, that’s why. Otherwise I wouldn’t care if he went out and I was here by myself. I know better than to let that one incident make me afraid to be alone. The cool cloth sure felt good. He musta taken it back to the bathroom on the way out.
Starsky got up and plodded down the hall to the bathroom. Finding the washcloth in question, he repeated the motions of wiping his face and neck, but it didn’t seem to have the same calming effect. It did make him feel a little cooler though. He returned to his room and crawled back up on the bed.
Something was nagging at him, disturbing his rest. Starsky forced his eyes open and realized he must have gone to sleep. Checking the clock, he noticed it was seven-thirty, an hour since Hutch left. Some great nap. The phone rang again. He pulled himself up and answered it.
“Starsk? You sound terrible. Is everything okay?”
“I’m okay,” he croaked back. His throat and congestion were both getting worse, and he knew he was burning up.
“What’s your temperature?”
“I dunno. I took a nap,” Starsky responded, feeling a bit disoriented.
“Check it now. I’ll wait.”
Starsky obeyed, a little slowly and clumsily, listening while Hutch made small talk on the other end of the phone about Cecile’s impressive menu of home-cooked gourmet food. He pulled the thermometer out and was unnerved at what he saw.
“It’s the same,” he lied to Hutch, not wanting to destroy the other’s evening.
“You’re lying. What is it really?” Hutch waited, knowing very well he wasn’t getting the straight story, and judging by Starsky’s slightly slurred voice, he figured it wasn’t good news.
“Hndrdfr,” he mumbled.
“What?!”
“It’s a hundred and four,” Starsky repeated, secretly glad Hutch was pushing. He felt lousy, almost like he might pass out, and wasn’t crazy about being alone anymore.
“I’m on my way.”
“I’ll go take a shower.”
“Stay right where you are. We’ll work on bringing it down. I don’t want you to shock your system bringing it down too fast. Drink some more water if you feel up to it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” The connection broke before Starsky could object. “I’m sorry, Cecile. I’ve got to go home. His fever’s 104 and—”
“That’s high. You better get going.” She rose from her seat on the couch to follow him to the front door. Cecile’s restored vintage home was elegantly decorated, accented with numerous antiques and boasted a sparkling chandelier by the stairs. They had only begun to visit about home restoration and the time and energy Cecile had put into her project when Hutch became uneasy and called home.
“I’m really sorry about dinner. You went to so much trouble.”
“It’s not your fault he’s sick, Ken. That fever’s too high to play around with. Will you give me a call later and let me know if he’s okay?”
“I sure will. Thank you for being so understanding about all this.”
“Don’t mention it. London Broil makes great cold sandwiches,” she replied good-naturedly.
“Good night.” He hurried out to his car and started toward home. A couple of blocks from Cecile’s house, he slapped the mars light on the roof and hit the siren to cut through the busy intersections between the neighborhoods.
He cut the siren and retrieved the light from the roof as he approached Cherry Street. No sense attracting all the neighbors’ attention. Pulling up in the drive, it occurred to him that Starsky had been right about Cecile. She was definitely worth the effort.
“Starsk?” Hutch called upstairs as he started mounting the steps to the second floor. “Starsky?”
“Hutch?” It was kind of a weak croak from Starsky’s bedroom.
“Hey, there, buddy, how’re you doin’?” Hutch approached the huddled form on the bed that was clutching at the comforter he had wrapped around his body.
“Not so good. I got undressed because I was so hot, and then I got cold…now I’m gettin’ hot again.” Starsky’s face was flushed, and the dark hair was clinging to his forehead in sweaty ringlets.
“I want to check that temperature again, then I’m calling the doctor.” He carefully placed the thermometer in Starsky’s mouth and then pushed the damp hair back with a gentle hand. The heat that greeted his touch unnerved him. “Everything’s okay, babe. Just relax.”
“Not goin’ t’the hsptl.”
“Maybe he can prescribe something. I think we should get you on an antibiotic pretty fast. I’m not messing around with this fever. Do you feel warm now?” He watched as Starsky nodded. “Lie still. I’m going to get a washcloth and some water and see if we can cool you down a bit.” Hutch went to the bathroom and gathered his supplies, which consisted of a towel, a washcloth and a plastic basin of room temperature water. He returned to his patient and checked the reading on the thermometer.
“Sorry, Hutch. I messed up your dinner with Cecile. She’s probably mad.”
“Shhh. Don’t you worry about Cecile. She was very understanding about the whole thing. No harm done, buddy.”
“Wha’ was it?”
“Still 104.” Hutch slowly bathed Starsky’s face with the cloth, then progressed to his neck. The cloth was radiating warmth when he’d finished. He dipped it in the water again and held it in his hands a moment to warm it a bit before touching it to Starsky’s shoulder and arm, which was his next project.
“Whaddya think’s wrong with me?” Starsky asked weakly, willingly relinquishing his grip on the quilt around him so Hutch could cool his shoulder and arm.
“What else feels bad, huh?”
“My throat, and my nose is gettin’ plugged.”
“Okay. Probably just a real bad flu bug. I’m going to get you cooled down a little and into bed—instead of on top of it here—and then I’m calling Dr. Silverman.”
“‘kay.” Starsky didn’t say anything else while Hutch worked on sponging him off with the cloth. There was no point trying to tell his partner how glad he was that he’d come home. He felt too weak and Hutch knew anyway.
With Starsky cooled down slightly, and having cajoled him into downing some ice water, Hutch called the doctor Starsky went to for any of his routine medical needs. There had been numerous specialists involved in his recovery from Gunther’s attack, but he preferred to stick with the friendly, older man who had previously handled all check-ups, prescriptions and other minor catastrophes since Starsky’s Aunt Rosie had set up his first appointment with him after he moved to LA.
The call to the doctor’s home eased Hutch’s mind greatly, as the other man immediately recognized Starsky’s symptoms, including the high fever, as part of a very bad flu bug that was going around that many of his patients had. He told Hutch he’d call a prescription over to the pharmacy right away.
“Good news, pal. You’re not terminal,” Hutch said cheerfully, sitting on the bed and resuming his gentle sponging with the cloth.
“What’ve I got?” Starsky turned away from him to cough.
“Just a really bad cold. He said some of his other patients have it too.”
“Feels like I’m dyin’,” Starsky muttered.
“I know. But you’re not. Now turn over on your side so I can do your back, huh?”
“Just got comfortable,” Starsky grumbled, obeying.
“You must be getting better. You’re bitching at me again,” Hutch responded with a smile in his voice.
“Sorry.” Starsky’s apology sounded sincere.
“I was kidding, babe.” Hutch patted his shoulder, and then carefully toweled off any moisture left by the cloth. “Okay. You can lie back. Legs are next.”
“This’d probably be more fun if they were Cecile’s,” Starsky quipped as Hutch uncovered one leg and began cooling it down with the cloth.
“Hopefully hers aren’t this hairy, anyway.” Hutch was glad to hear Starsky laugh a little, even if it did end in another coughing jag.
“Are you gonna hafta go get the prescription?”
“No. I called Huggy. He’s pickin’ it up for us.”
“Good. I’d…kinda like you t’stick around.”
“I’m not moving until that fever goes way down.”
“I feel better now.”
“You’re not as hot as you were when we got started, that’s for sure.” Hutch was repeating the entire process again, starting back at his partner’s forehead, and finding less intense heat this time around. “Here. Drink this.” Hutch paused to fill another glass with ice water and held it while Starsky dutifully swallowed as much as he could.
“Feels good going down,” he said, lying back on the pillows.
“How ’bout I call Huggy and tell him to bring a big Slurpee along with the prescription, huh?”
“Yesss,” Starsky agreed, savoring the thought. He was quiet while Hutch made the call back to Huggy’s and put in his order for a Slurpee, preferably cherry.
“Cecile’s place is really nice,” Hutch stated conversationally as he worked his way down Starsky’s arm. “She’s got it finished, totally restored. One thing she added was a chandelier by the stairs. Between you and me, I think it’s overkill.”
“Too showy, huh?” Starsky asked, eyes closed. The cooling influence of the cloth was relaxing him, along with the reassurance of Hutch’s presence.
“A little. She gave me the grand tour.” He blotted the right arm and Starsky lifted it while Hutch tucked it back under the covers again. Beginning the left arm, he continued. “She turned the attic into a studio—she likes to paint. She’s pretty good, too.”
“You should get back to doin’ some painting.”
“I was never very good, Starsk.”
“Good artist, lousy art critic,” Starsky grumbled. “Say—you could take time out to take off your jacket if you want.” Starsky was a little amused that his partner had flown in the house, landed at his side and worked tirelessly on the fever reduction activities ever since, still fully put together in sport coat and tie.
“Good idea.” Hutch took off the jacket and tossed it on a nearby chair and soon sent the tie flying to join it. He rolled up his sleeves and after unbuttoning the top two shirt buttons, looked much more relaxed.
“I meant what I said. I liked some of your paintings.”
“Starsk, if I doodle on a cocktail napkin, you tell me it’s an interesting design. You’re not exactly objective, buddy.”
“Guilty as charged. But I still think you’re good. Didn’t you ever enter anything in school?”
“Like what?” Hutch was back to the legs now, letting Starsky have a rest from turning to have his back done. Starsky paused for an earth-shattering sneeze. “Gezhundeit.” Hutch grabbed a couple of kleenex out of a box on the night stand and handed them to Starsky.
“You’re gonna catch this,” Starsky warned hoarsely as he started blowing his nose.
“I’ve lived through worse. Now tell me what you meant about entering things?”
“You know those science fairs and art contests and stuff? Did you ever enter anything?”
“A couple of essay contests, a few tennis tournaments, stuff like that.”
“Bet you won the essay contests.”
“No,” Hutch responded, smiling. “I got second place in one, honorable mention in another.”
“Outta how many people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it just your school or local or what?”
“National,” Hutch responded quietly, toweling off the left leg and then re-covering his partner. “I want to check that temperature again before you start sucking on that Slurpee.”
“National? Like the whole United States?”
“The whole United States,” Hutch said, laughing a little.
“Wow. Second place? For real?”
“Starsky, that was twenty years ago. So what?”
“That’s amazing. Outta all those kids, yours was in the top two? Bet your parents were really excited about that.”
“Not really. It wasn’t number one. The first prize winner and his parents got a trip to the White House.”
“But yours was the second best—I mean, that means it’s just about the best in the whole country, and maybe it really was the best because some of that stuff’s subjective, and if it was just one judge’s opinion—” Starsky was obviously becoming agitated on this point.
“I think you’re delirious. Calm down, pal. You’ll drive that fever right back up if you get all worked up over nothing. Now shut up so I can check your temperature.”
“No, this is important. Weren’t your parents kinda excited?”
“Starsky, there is one simple fact about my parents. They love me very much, and they gave me everything they could. But with them, second place isn’t anything. It’s not the winner. Not the best. Therefore, it isn’t any more meaningful than nothing at all.” He stuck the thermometer in Starsky’s mouth. “Now be quiet so I can check that.”
“Ithnktsmthg.”
“Don’t try to talk.”
“I said,” he removed the thermometer much to Hutch’s exasperation, “I think it’s something. Do you still have it?”
“What?”
“The essay—the one that got second place?”
“I suppose, somewhere.”
“Can I read it?”
“If you put the thermometer back in and leave it there. Don’t make me take it the other way.”
“Oh yeah? You and what army?” Starsky shot back defiantly.
“You don’t want me to put it under your arm, huh?” Hutch smiled innocently as the thermometer went back in his partner’s mouth without further comment. The doorbell rang, signaling Huggy’s arrival. “I’ll be right back.”
“Lkutfrst.”
“I give up. What?” Hutch stopped in the doorway. Starsky removed the thermometer again.
“Look out first. Before you open the door, huh?” The genuine concern in Starsky’s face saddened Hutch a little. There were still a few scars from the ordeal with Curtis’s henchmen that hadn’t faded. Of course, with Curtis unidentified and not behind bars, it wasn’t an invalid fear.
“Always do, pal. Be right back.”
Huggy, his prescription bag and large cup from the nearby 7-Eleven store were a welcome sight.
“How’s the patient?” he asked cheerfully.
“Better I think. I’m just checking his temperature again now. Thanks for getting this stuff.”
“The pleasure is mine, of course,” Huggy responded.
“You want to enter the germ zone upstairs or should I give Starsky your best?”
“Remote control, my man. I’ll pass on the visit for now.”
“Probably a good idea.”
“Well, I got a happenin’ crowd for a Tuesday night, so I’m gonna head back to the bar. Anita’s holdin’ down the fort, and—”
“We love her like crazy but wouldn’t exactly trust her with the family fortune, huh?”
“Crowds make her nervous.” Huggy headed back out the door.
“That’s encouraging. See you later, Hug. Thanks again.”
“Oh, Hutch—you given any more thought to what we talked about Sunday?”
“What—oh, right.” Hutch took a deep breath. “No, I haven’t. But I will.”
“Do that. Later, my friend.” Huggy headed down the walk toward the curb.
Hutch returned to the second floor, sorry to disturb his patient, who had nodded off while he was waiting. The thermometer was on the nightstand. Hutch held it up to the light.
“Pretty good huh?”
“102.6—hey, progress, partner. Let’s get you propped up, huh? Can’t drink a Slurpee flat on your back.”
“Guess not.” Starsky was repositioned to sitting against the headboard against carefully arranged pillows.
“Here. Says to take one every four hours.” Hutch dropped a capsule in Starsky’s hand and then handed him a glass of water to chase it. “Now, you get this.” He handed his partner the frozen drink.
“So where’s the essay?” he asked after a long draw on the straw.
“You’re serious?”
“That’s big stuff, Hutch. I never won anything as important as that.” Starsky took another pull on the straw. His face was very flushed now, but between Hutch’s tireless efforts and the prescription, the fever would be contained and eventually conquered.
“It’s probably in the attic somewhere in those cartons. I never look at that old stuff.”
“Come on. You got any other old stuff from high school?”
“It’s probably all in that one carton up there, but—”
“Just bring the box, huh?”
“Starsk, that’s ancient history.”
“But you never talk about it much, and I wanna know.” Back to the Slurpee.
“Okay. I’ll go see what I can find. But when you finish that, we’ve got to sponge you off again. You’re not exactly cured at 102.6, ya know.”
“I know.”
“Here. Put this on while you’re sitting up.” Hutch held a pajama top for Starsky while he slid into it. “I’ll go up and look for that stuff.”
Hutch was completely puzzled by his partner’s sudden interest in his high school days. Why Starsky would want to look at stale old yearbooks depicting a bunch of preppy teenagers posing with tennis trophies was beyond him. His obsession about the essay was even more confusing. Yet somewhere, lurking in the back of his mind, a part of him was rejoicing at the attention that old achievement had finally gotten. His parents had conservatively complimented him for a “good effort” and put his prize money in his savings account and that was the end of the hoopla. Several weeks of revising and agonizing to get that essay just right, and making it through all those preliminary steps…and for what? Maybe for tonight, Hutch thought with a little grin as he lugged the lone carton of high school memorabilia down to Starsky’s room.
“Thought ya died up there,” Starsky grumbled as he loudly drained the Slurpee cup. “Now I gotta go.” Starsky slid out of bed and made his way down the hall. He was back quickly, climbing back among freshly fluffed pillows. Hutch sat next to him, retrieving his washcloth after pressing a hand on Starsky’s forehead.
After completing another sponge job, Hutch was satisfied they’d both been through enough effort for awhile, and settled next to Starsky, leaning against the headboard, and began pulling trinkets out of the carton he set on the bed in front of his crisscrossed legs. Starsky took in all the yearbook photos with great interest, asking for clarification of who everyone was, what Hutch was doing in them, which people were his friends, who he dated—essentially, the story of his life.
Starsky was surprised by the number of awards and honors Hutch had racked up during his high school years. He’d always known Hutch was smart, and then found out he’d been valedictorian of his class, but he hadn’t known he’d won a couple of regional chess tournaments, maintained a solid record while he played basketball and also earned a local junior tennis tournament title. Add to that the essay honors, and Starsky was duly impressed.
“Man, you must’ve been awful smart.”
“Think so, huh?” Hutch responded, smiling. He felt Starsky’s cheek. It was noticeably cooler.
“Can you read me the essay? My eyes are kind of burning, and I don’t feel so great.”
“It can wait, buddy.”
“But I wanna hear it.”
“Okay. Let’s get you flatter in case you want to go to sleep.” After moving the pillows to allow Starsky to lie back, Hutch pulled out the old folder with the carefully typed, slightly yellowed pages inside.
“What’s the name of it?”
“‘How I Can Make a Difference.’ Pretty corny stuff, huh?” Hutch seemed to be as flushed as his feverish partner now, and Starsky chuckled affectionately.
“Did you pick the topic?”
“Hell no.”
“Read it to me.” Starsky listened in silence as Hutch read the three page essay detailing the ways in which one person can, in fact, make a difference in the world around them simply through their own individual actions. Things like concern for the environment, charity to the needy, empathy for others, concern for social justice…all the values that had become trendy were all there in Hutch’s old essay. Hutch was socially responsible and concerned before it became the hip thing to be. When he’d finished, he assumed Starsky was asleep by looking at the closed lids.
“Hey.”
“Thought you were sleeping, pal.” Hutch stopped his movement off the side of the bed.
“Shoulda been first place.”
“Thanks, buddy.” Hutch didn’t sound convinced.
“I mean it. I know it probably sounds dumb ’cause I didn’t know ya then, but I’m real proud of the kid that wrote that essay—and did all that other stuff. I’m real proud he’d wanna hang out with me.” Starsky watched a little gulp wiggle Hutch’s Adam’s apple.
“I’m just proud you let me, babe.” He brushed his hand across Starsky’s forehead and rested it on his cheek a minute, ostensibly to check his fever, but Starsky fully received all the love and gratitude that were really behind it. “Get some sleep, buddy. I’ll be right over there in that chair. Don’t be startled if you feel me check you out once in awhile for the fever. And you’ll need another pill in about three hours.”
“Okay.” Starsky let himself drift. “Night, Blintz.”
“Night, Gordo. Sleep tight.”
Starsky slept quietly a few feet away. In the dim light of the bedroom, Hutch squinted at the words he’d so carefully chosen all those years ago. “Second place doesn’t exist, son. Nobody remembers the contestant who almost won.” Starsky would have been shocked, horrified even, by Hutch’s father’s credo.
Sometimes during his childhood, Hutch had felt like just another one of his father’s prized racehorses: driven, groomed and trained to win…and judged by the return on his investment. Second place doesn’t exist… That need to win had made him a competitor. He’d even resorted to playing mind games on Starsky during their partnership. His partner, born and raised in an environment that made him tough, confident and street-smart on the job, threatened the fearful part inside of Hutch that was compelled to be the best. He was good, a skillful cop—Hutch knew that about himself. But he’d envied Starsky’s more extensive street experience (though he seldom envied the tougher childhood his partner had survived), and the Kenneth Hutchinson who’d been programmed not only to achieve, but to be the best—number one—questioned that he really was the superior half of the duo sometimes, so he found ways to prove to himself he was still superior.
Whether he’d catch Starsky in a mind game because he was smarter or because Starsky trusted him and didn’t weigh each thing Hutch told him didn’t matter in the early years. After Gunther, it began to matter. Watching Starsky dying in an ICU unit, being the “brains” of the duo didn’t mean anything. Neither did being number one, or being superior. He had been letting his father’s priorities seep into his own behavior, despite his overt desire to reject them. When you spend your entire life living from one pat on the head to the next, and they are few, far between and very hard-won, it’s hard to break that pattern.
Starsky came along and shattered it into a million pieces. He was like a tidal wave of energy crashing through Hutch’s orderly life. With Starsky, Hutch got so many rewards just for being in his space. Just because Starsky loved him. Not only did he find his achievements celebrated, no matter how minor they seemed to him, but he found his failures analyzed by a forgiving heart that never condemned him. If he messed up, Starsky never let him take more than his share of the blame, nor did he let Hutch sink into thinking he was somehow personally inferior because he made a mistake, or because he got in the middle of bad circumstances.
If I’ve been “parenting” you, babe, you’ve done your share too. You’ve been the proud parent I never had. The one who loves unconditionally, who would hang even the ugliest children’s art works in places of prominence. The one whose eyes light up like a kid at Christmas when I sing, who rejoices and takes pride in all my second places, honorable mentions… The one who could love a dirty, wild-eyed junkie in a grimy back alley, a raving madman grieving over the corpse of his prostitute girlfriend…who would touch hands tainted with a deadly plague without a moment’s hesitation…who can get excited over a damned 20-year-old essay…who, sick and feverish, in one blustery fall night, can validate my entire youth and all the little victories I worked so hard for that I thought were meaningless… Maybe I finally can relax. After all, I know I’ve got first place firmly sewn-up—at least in your eyes. So what would I have to keep competing for?
You’re proud of me. Of the principled sophomore who sat up nights to organize this little essay. The kid who said that each man doing the right thing, taking moral responsibility for himself, could make a difference—that’s who you’re proud of…not a bitter, world-weary cop who’d pull strings to orchestrate a prison gang rape.
I’m going to live up to that soul that’s still in me somewhere. Because you love me for that part of me you know is there…the artist, the singer, the philosopher.
Hutch got up and walked stealthily over to the bed to check Starsky’s temperature. On an impulse, he leaned down and rested his forehead very lightly against the feverish warmth of his partner’s. It didn’t seem as hot to the touch as before.
“Hi.” Starsky’s quiet greeting startled Hutch. The other could usually sleep through an earthquake, but he was awake now, almost as if the power of Hutch’s thoughts, more than his touch, had been enough.
“Hi yourself. Just checking your temperature.”
“I’m hot.”
“It’s probably still high. How about I cool you down again—would that feel good?”
“Yeah,” he responded with a faint smile. “But you should go to bed. Gotta get up early.”
“Don’t worry about me, buddy. I’m just fine.” Hutch shook down the thermometer and placed it in Starsky’s mouth. “No talking this time. I’m going to get some fresh water. I’ll be right back.”
Starsky watched his partner leave the room for the bathroom. He thought back of the essay Hutch had read earlier, and how little his partner ever seemed to think of his own accomplishments. The Hutchinsons are a nice enough family, but they sure have their priorities screwed up. No wonder the poor guy trips over his feet—and his tongue—when he’s trying so hard to make a good impression. Shit, you made him jump through hoops and even when he jumped through nine out of ten of them, you scolded him for missing the tenth, not making it through the other nine successfully. You were blessed with a bright, artistic, sensitive kid, and nothing he ever did was quite good enough. He never thinks anything he does is anything special, no matter how special it really is. He turns nearly the color of the Torino when he gets any praise, and he never thinks he deserves it. Bet you never even framed the award he got for his essay…
“Okay, let’s have a look at this.” Hutch set the basin and cloth on the night stand and checked the thermometer. “Progress, buddy. 101.6.”
“You call that progress? I’m sweating like crazy.”
“Well, that’s better than the chills. And it’s going down instead of up, so you’re getting better.” Hutch took the comforter off the top of the covers to make the bed a little less stifling. “We’re going to sponge you down and then move you to the cool side of the bed.”
Starsky relaxed and let Hutch do his work. Everything handled with the usual gentleness and caution Starsky remembered from his days recovering from the shooting. Hutch had taken over just about every task that didn’t require an R.N. or licensed medical staffer to complete. He’d learned all the physical therapy exercises that could be done at home, cheerfully put up with Starsky’s alternately depressed or irritable moods when he was in a lot of pain, and never acted as if any of it was a hard job. Without thinking, Starsky shifted onto his side. He was so warm he didn’t want to wait for the ultimate relief any longer.
“Feels pretty good, huh?” Hutch asked in response to an involuntary moan of relief at the washcloth making its way down Starsky’s back.
“Mmhm.” He relaxed as the heat and sweat were soaked into the cloth, then the soft terry cloth of the towel was there, gently blotting any leftover moisture. A particularly nasty coughing jag rattled him, and he felt a reassuring hand settle in the middle of his back momentarily until it passed.
“Okay now?” Hutch waited for the nod. Starsky turned over so he could start on his arms. “Cough’s getting down into your chest, pal. I should get a vaporizer or something in here.” He moved to the second arm. “If your fever stays down, it would probably do you good to take a shower. The steam would loosen things up.” He covered the second arm and started on the legs. He glanced up at Starsky and their eyes met for a moment, and held. There was a wealth of unspoken gratitude in the look, and Hutch just smiled and continued his work. He couldn’t help but fear anything getting into Starsky’s lungs after the shooting. He always harbored the worry that somehow the repaired lung wouldn’t withstand a strenuous illness like pneumonia.
When Hutch finished, he got his partner repositioned on the cool side of the bed and hurried downstairs to replenish the supply of ice water. Upon his return, he encouraged Starsky to drink some, then take his next pill.
“Feels good over here. Cooler,” Starsky said, smiling slightly.
“Just keep covered up. I know you’re warm, but you don’t want to get chilled.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I’ll call Dobey in the morning. Don’t worry about that.”
“We’re out of sick days.”
“So let him dock us. He can call Silverman if he wants verification.”
“We can’t get docked. House insurance comes due this month.”
“Starsky, you worry about the damnedest things at the damnedest times.”
“So who’s gonna pay it—the good fairy?” Starsky started coughing again, an unpleasant, chesty sound.
“Just settle down. It’ll get paid. Dobey hasn’t docked us yet. What reason would we have to play hooky now? It’s not like we don’t want to work on our cases.”
“Did they frame it?” Starsky wasn’t looking at his partner, but was fidgeting with the hem on his sheet.
“What?” Hutch honestly couldn’t figure that question out, and he knew Starsky was way too coherent to be babbling deliriously.
“Your award, or certificate, or whatever—for the essay.”
“It was already a plaque. They didn’t have to.”
“Where’d they hang it?”
“I had it in my room for awhile, but I put it away after a week or so.”
“Is it in there?” He nodded toward the box on the floor near the bed.
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?”
“Sure.” Long past being annoyed at Starsky’s curiosity on this point, Hutch smiled as he dug through the old memorabilia and fished out the small, shield-shaped wood plaque with the engraved brass plate on it. He handed it to Starsky.
“That’s nice.” He looked back at Hutch. “Why’d you take it down?”
“Because it didn’t mean anything to anybody…including me…until now.” Hutch smiled at his partner, who was squinting to read all of the inscription. “Would you, um, want to…uh, keep it?”
“Can I?” Starsky responded with a little smile.
“It’s probably a dumb question. I just thought maybe…since you were, you know, interested…”
“I’d love to have it. I know just where I’m gonna put it, too.”
“You’re not hanging that up, Starsky,” Hutch admonished.
“My plaque, my room. I can do what I want with it. It’s going right over there, next to the picture of my dad, right where the evening sun’ll hit the brass on it. Thanks, Hutch.”
“You’re not serious about hanging it up. You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to.”
“You already hung that ugly painting in here.” Hutch referred to a painting he’d done of the beach at night, complete with the moon and stars. To him it had always looked like something Van Gogh might have done when he was drunk. Starsky had found it in the attic, framed the stupid thing and hung it over his bed. Repulsed by the barf-green carpeting that ran throughout the house, Starsky had pulled that up and polished up his hardwood floor. All the accents in the room were varying shades of blue, and Starsky’s argument was that the painting tied all the colors together. He was right about that part, but Hutch still couldn’t picture anyone wanting it as a focal point in their bedroom.
“Hey, watch what you say about my painting. You saying I have rotten taste?”
“No, I’m saying you’re too polite to take it down if it’s driving you nuts.”
“It’s tranquil. I like it. It stays. And this,” he gestured with the plaque, “goes right up there by my dad’s picture. No more arguments.”
“You’re right. No more arguments. You go to sleep.” Hutch took the plaque and set it on the empty side of the large bed. “And get your arms under the blanket before you catch pneumonia, dummy.” Hutch held up the covers while Starsky obeyed wordlessly. “Forehead feels cooler,” Hutch announced, resting his hand there briefly. “I’m going to dig through my stuff for the vaporizer. I know I’ve got one somewhere. I don’t like the sound of that cough.”
“Okay.” Starsky was settled back in bed again, shifting on his side to go to sleep. He drifted off listening to the sounds of Hutch rifling around overhead in the attic, locating and hooking up the vaporizer, then settling back in the chair. He noticed the last lamp go out, leaving the room in darkness. But this darkness was friendly, peaceful and secure.
* * * *
The first thing Hutch did when morning dawned was call Huggy. Upon asking his friend to forget the conversation they’d had about Mercer, Huggy simply replied, “What conversation would that be?” Hutch hung up, smiling, relieved that his two friends were able to see deeper into his soul than he himself could.
Hutch called Dobey when his call to Huggy was finished. The captain was ruffled, but ultimately understanding. The doorbell startled him, and brought him hurrying down the stairs and through the house to the front door to be sure the visitor didn’t ring again. It was only eight, and Starsky was still asleep. Hutch wanted to keep it that way. He was shocked to see Cecile standing on the front porch with a grocery bag in her arms.
“Good morning,” he greeted, opening the door. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I completely forgot about calling last night—it was pretty late by the time we settled down.”
“That’s okay, Ken. I brought some things I thought might help. How is he?” she asked, as Hutch carried the bag and she followed him to the kitchen.
“Better. His temperature was 101.6 the last time I checked, and going down I think. I’m worried about the cough. He had some lung damage in a shooting a couple years back, and I always worry about what pneumonia or even a healthy dose of bronchitis would do to him.” He looked in the top of the bag.
“Get out of there.” She shooed him away and started unpacking it herself. “First, I have frozen orange juice pops. Best way to get vitamin C down bad patients.”
“God, you really do know him, don’t you?” Hutch laughed as he accepted two ice cube trays filled with the orange liquid with toothpicks stuck in the middles.
“I’m the ultimate bad patient. Takes one to outwit one. I have grape-flavored cough syrup—also for the fussy patient who hates the taste of everything.” She set that bottle on the table and kept unloading. “Next, we have Tylenol, either for him or for his nurse. And, for the man who probably hasn’t eaten since last night,” she pulled out a bundle of foil-wrapped items, “we have cold London broil sandwiches.”
“I don’t know what to say. I stand you up for dinner, and then you do all this.”
“You didn’t stand me up. You had an emergency. There’s a difference. You look wasted. Did you get any sleep at all last night?”
“Not much.”
“Maybe you can get a nap today. He’ll probably be better once the fever is down. Even if he’s sick, he won’t need so much constant attention.”
“Then you don’t know Starsky as well as I thought you did,” Hutch responded, smiling. “Thanks again for all this.”
“Don’t mention it. Listen, I have a meeting at nine, so I better get moving. If you need anything, give me a call. And as soon as you can, we’ll try for dinner again.”
“Sounds great,” he said, smiling as he followed her back through the house to the front door. “Thanks, Cecile.” He leaned forward, intending to give her a little peck on the cheek, and somehow ended up lips-on-lips, lingering for more than a peck.
“Guess you’re not as sleepy as you look,” she said, smiling as she backed away a little. “Hold that thought for when you can get a relief nurse.”
“Will do,” Hutch responded, holding the screen door as she passed through it and headed down the front steps to the walk. “Cecile?”
“Yeah?” She turned around just before going down the cement steps to the sidewalk.
“Let’s make that dinner real soon.”
“You got it. Call me.”
“Count on it,” Hutch replied, still smiling. As she drove away, he realized he was still standing in the open door with a ridiculous look on his face. Hastening to close it, he was startled by a robust coughing jag at the head of the stairs. Upon discovery, Starsky’s face flushed from more than fever. “And just how long have you been lurking up there?” he challenged his partner, who had put on an old suit of sweats and his socks.
“Ah…I, uh, just got here.”
“Sure you did. That’s why you’re blushing up to your earlobes.”
“I’m sick, remember?”
“Not that sick. You’re nosy.” Hutch started back toward the kitchen, and Starsky followed him, coughing and sneezing his way down the stairs. “What’re you doing out of bed anyway?”
“I’m hungry.”
“I was coming up in a few minutes with breakfast.”
“I’m not dying, Hutch. Just,” he paused for a very significant sneeze muffled by a handful of Kleenex, “sick.” He looked more bleary-eyed and miserable after the sneeze, and Hutch took mercy on him.
“You still feel warm?” He tested the forehead.
“Yeah, but not as bad.”
“Your face feels cooler. Before you start shoveling stuff in for breakfast, let me check your temperature again.”
“Aw, come on, Hutch. I feel,” he paused to sneeze again. “Better.”
“You sound great.” Hutch directed him to a seat at the kitchen table and stuck the thermometer in his mouth.
“Whtsllths?” Starsky indicated the pile of supplies on the table. Hutch had learned to decipher well by now, and figuring that was a “What’s all this?,” he answered accordingly.
“Cecile brought us some supplies. She made sandwiches out of last night’s dinner, and brought some cough syrup and other stuff.”
“Ndlps.”
“What was that?” Hutch removed the thermometer to check the reading.
“And lips—I never saw such a smooth move as that. You were headin’ right for her cheek and she somehow managed to get her lips in the right place.”
“How’d she do that?” Hutch asked, almost sincerely.
“It’s all in the neck—kind of a duck and twist thing.”
“Sounds like the voice of experience,” Hutch accused.
“Sometimes you just gotta get it however you can.” Starsky flexed his eyebrows. “So’m I gonna live?”
“At 100.9? Damn straight you’re gonna live. Here,” Hutch said, handing him one of the orange juice cubes. “Reward.”
“Cecile made these?” he asked, happy to attack anything cold, wet, and refreshing.
“Yup. We’ll have a couple of the sandwiches later for lunch.” Hutch put the rest of the supplies away and went about fixing breakfast.
“She likes you.”
“I like her too.”
“That’s progress, then.” Starsky was smiling when Hutch glanced back at him, and he had to return it. Maybe things were finally looking up a bit.
* * * *
Starsky’s cold kept him sidelined for a few days, but luckily didn’t progress into the feared pneumonia or bronchitis. He went to see his doctor for a check up later in the week, and was told that several patients had been hospitalized at the fever stage. Hutch had done his job well. Starsky made it a point to hang the essay plaque exactly where he said it was going as soon as he was up and around again. Hutch never commented on it, but Starsky knew how much it all had seemed to mean to his partner.
Halloween arrived with all its trick-or-treaters and scary movies. Hutch had to admit the house did look festive for the holiday, and with the prospect of getting to know Cecile better, Starsky healthy again—both physically and emotionally—he could start to care about things like that.
Thanksgiving loomed on the horizon, and Starsky was in favor of inviting relatives and friends and having a big holiday dinner at the house. His argument that they had the room for it now was a valid one, but something in Hutch didn’t have any desire to invite his parents after they’d declined to fly out there for the funeral. He also could foresee a wealth of snide remarks and criticisms over the condition of the house, the impracticality of it, and his decision to set up housekeeping with his partner.
Starsky didn’t push the issue, figuring Hutch had his reasons, some of which Starsky very clearly understood after their late-night essay discussion, and he settled for inviting his mother. The news on that front was not promising as she finally admitted she’d been having some health problems, and the doctor didn’t think the trip would be a good thing for her. After an hour-long phone call of attempting to drag out of her what was wrong, she revealed she’d been having chest pains off and on, the cause of which hadn’t been identified yet. Needless to say, she wanted to remain near her own doctor.
The news of his mother’s questionable health took the bounce out of Starsky’s attitude, but he vowed to keep in regular touch with her, and Hutch was constantly reminding him that not only had the doctors not found anything wrong at this point, but that there were numerous things that could cause her discomfort that were not all life-threatening. Since he relied on Hutch’s assessment of all health-related issues to a greater extent than he relied on his doctor’s, Starsky was calmed by that thought, and they made plans to host a small gathering of friends for Thanksgiving dinner.
The press had made a daily activity out of “updating” the public on the progress of the Bridegroom task force. What this essentially amounted to was regular columns and articles berating the police department for their lack of action in solving the case. There was no doubt that the investigation had suffered as a result of the series of personal setbacks plaguing two of the task force’s primary detectives. Nedloe, Elliot, Farver, Kennedy, Shemanski, and Walling, however, all devoted some time each day to some investigative activity related to the serial murders. The hotline had fizzled, no worthwhile sightings of Evan Jordan had been reported. His bank accounts had been cleaned out the day he disappeared, and it was apparent his grandmother had kept those accounts well-filled. Being a student at USC and holding down a very part-time work study job on the campus was not sufficient to build up the balances he’d had at his disposal. They had also most likely bought him a very good cover and hasty departure.
Starsky was crouched over his desk, studying the coroner’s report on a new, unrelated homicide. Hutch was on the phone, arguing with Bill in the evidence room about a piece of victim’s clothing each was convinced the other had misplaced. Into the relative quiet and routine of this Thursday morning in early November, Christine Walling crashed through the squad room doors triumphantly waving a file folder over her head. It didn’t excite Starsky that she was heading for his desk with such unbridled enthusiasm.
The curvy blonde with the assertive personality had established early in her tenure in the male-dominated squad room that she was not to be hit on or harassed or treated any differently than any of the “guys.” Starsky had once made the mistake of playfully swatting her with a file folder, and she’d turned around and informed him that he was a Neanderthal sexist pig, and that if he ever pulled such a stunt again, she’d file a sexual harassment complaint against him. Since Starsky sometimes playfully hit Hutch on the butt with a file or newspaper, he hadn’t thought it was a terribly erotic gesture at the time. He was treating her like she’d asked to be treated—like one of the guys. From that day on, he’d kept a distinct and very noticeable physical distance between himself and Walling. Now she was homing in on him like a heat-seeking missile, landing with one hip on the edge of his desk and spreading out photos on top of the file he was reading.
“I’ve got it!” she declared enthusiastically.
“Got what?” He sat back in his chair.
“You said that Evan Jordan’s photo looked familiar, right?” She tucked her hair behind her ear as she leaned forward to show him two photos. “This is the photo of Evan Jordan that made you notice something familiar,” she indicated the photo of Jordan with the Irish setter, which his grandmother had provided. “This is a photo of Ben Forest, taken out of one of your old case files. Notice anything?”
“Oh my God.” Starsky slid the photos closer to each other. Jordan was younger, had longer hair, and was smiling pleasantly as opposed to the close-cropped, middle-aged, grim-faced Forest in his mug shot. The features and coloring were almost identical. Hutch had deserted his desk at the mention of Forest’s name, and now the three of them were huddled around Starsky’s desk, staring at the two pictures.
“Remember how Mrs. Jordan said that her daughter didn’t marry Evan’s father? What if…” Starsky let the sentence trail off unfinished.
“I’ll call Minnie. She ought to be able to check on Jordan’s birth certificate.” Hutch grabbed the phone and quickly gave Minnie the assignment of finding out who was listed as Jordan’s father. He kept wishing Christine would be called away to another project, wanting to discuss the implications of all this with Starsky. If Evan Jordan was, indeed, Ben Forest’s son, he was probably the one behind the syringe and the photo mailings.
“Hey, what’s the occasion?” Jack Elliot noticed the gathering of detectives around Starsky’s desk.
“Possible connection between Evan Jordan and Ben Forest,” Christine spoke up proudly.
“No shit?” Jack looked over Starsky’s shoulder at the photos. “Looks like him—what’re you thinking—son, nephew?”
“Son. Jordan’s mother never married his father, and we never did have the father’s name,” Hutch clarified. The phone rang, and he pounced on it, figuring it would be Minnie with an answer. He appeared to deflate as soon as he’d answered the phone. He thanked her and hung up. “Father is listed as unknown.”
“That’s not too surprising, even if it is Forest. He was married wasn’t he—before we ran into him?” Starsky started digging through the files.
“To Mary Jane Brittingham. She died a few years before he was arrested. They didn’t have any children,” Christine replied.
“Very interesting,” Jack picked up the photo of Jordan. “Huh.”
“What?” Starsky looked up at him.
“This a spare copy of this photo?”
“Yeah.”
“Got a marker?”
“Sure.” Starsky pulled open his middle desk drawer and handed one to Jack. The older man hunched over the desk next to Starsky’s and did something to the photo, then tossed it back in front of Starsky. He had drawn a cap, sunglasses and a mustache on Evan Jordan. “Remind you of anybody?”
“Curtis,” Starsky stated succinctly. “The hair’s the right length and color, he’s a student—wouldn’t stand out at the Eisenman rally—”
“And he’s loaded—has the ready cash to peel off a few grand and pass it out to get a job done,” Jack added. “And it would be in his best interest to do something to distract you two from the case, and that in turn distracted us for some vital days while we chased Neo-Nazis around instead of looking for this little shit.”
“But Schoemacher—the flag—” Starsky was momentarily confused at such a coincidence, then he remembered that Jordan had been in their house to place the mannequin in Hutch’s room. “He saw it when he came to the house…”
“Took the idea and ran with it.” Jack nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Why didn’t we think of that before?” Hutch looked at the photo and then handed it to Christine to examine.
“Because we were all doin’ what he wanted us to do—runnin’ in the opposite direction,” Jack stated simply. “He probably is smart enough to know that if you attack a cop, all the other cops he works with are gonna want in on that case, and that takes the spotlight off the task at hand—nailing this little bastard to the wall.”
“We still don’t have proof positive he’s Curtis.” Hutch was hesitant to accept such a neat, comprehensive package. But Ben Forest’s son might have access to the drug information, and be able to use it to distract him from the investigation, and what had happened to Starsky was certainly an effective diversion.
“Where the wheels came off for him was in two places,” Jack continued. “First, he didn’t plan on Schoemacher having such an airtight alibi for the night it happened. Second, he thought he’d paid the scum he hired well enough to keep their mouths shut. Not a smart little crook, is he? There’s not enough money printed to predict what hired scum are gonna do when they’re nailed.” Jack smiled slightly. “Did keep us chasin’ our tails there for quite awhile though. Gotta hand him that much.”
“This is all terrific, but we still can’t get a line on this guy. I mean, how many dead end tips have we each followed in the last week alone?” Starsky slumped back in his chair.
“Maybe he’s moving around as Curtis now—moving in the redneck circles where he won’t stand out much,” Christine suggested. “Even though we’ve been hunting for ‘Curtis,’ our description is very vague—fits any one of hundreds of guys who wear caps and sunglasses and hang out in bars.”
“Wearing their sunglasses?” Starsky added.
“He was trying to stay incognito to do that deal. He probably wouldn’t have to worry that much just mingling around in a bar. Of course, if he disguised himself to be Curtis, there’s no reason he couldn’t have altered his appearance again,” Christine replied. “We’ve got to accept the possibility we could be looking for a man with short black hair and a mustache, or a blond, or a bald guy with earrings—he could be anywhere, looking like anyone.”
“Thanks, Christine. You just made my day,” Jack grumbled. Jim Nedloe was just arriving, and immediately gravitated to the muttering group.
“What’s new?” He leaned over Starsky’s shoulder to see the photos. “Ben Forest? What’s this got to do with him?”
“Plenty, maybe. We think Evan Jordan is his kid,” Starsky explained.
“Whew. Never would’ve guessed that one.”
“Starsky said he looked familiar, so I went back through all their old case files,” Christine explained. “I missed it on the first two passes because I was looking for Jordan—possibly under another name or a minor offense that Starsky and Hutchinson wouldn’t necessarily remember. Then, I started looking for a resemblance. Voila! There he was.”
“I don’t know if asking his grandmother directly about Forest is a good idea. If he’s in touch with her, she might tip him off that we know,” Starsky commented, having located Mrs. Jordan’s phone number among his notes.
“Yeah, but she turned him in in the first place, Starsk,” Hutch responded.
“True…”
“Ever think of asking his mother directly?” Jim suggested. “Farver and Kennedy talked to her a while back. Let me get them up here and we’ll hammer this out right now.” He picked up the phone and dialed Mike Farver’s extension. Stan Kennedy answered, and Jim told him to bring his partner up to the task force office ASAP. Christine tracked down her partner, Grant Shemanski, and he agreed to join the meeting. The group of detectives gathered their materials and headed down the hall to the cubby hole that was still reserved for the Bridegroom case.
The final pair of detectives arrived quickly, the tall, lanky Farver choosing his usual perch against the window sill while his partner sat on the edge of the desk. Furnished with a desk with a chair on either side, two telephones and two spare straight chairs, the office was not conducive for large gatherings. The walls were peppered with maps, reports, notes on tips—both fruitful and worthless—photos of the victims, crime scene photos, composite sketches of Jordan and a few photos of him.
Starsky always made sure Hutch got a chair facing away from the wall containing the crime scene photos. He’d spotted the ones depicting Sandra’s corpse before Hutch had, and snatched them off the wall. He informed the rest of the task force that those photos would remain in a folder in the drawer, clearly labeled, and were not to be brought out in Hutch’s presence. This had led to a not-entirely-pleasant exchange between Starsky and Farver, who stated that he could understand Hutch’s emotional involvement in that portion of the case, but suggested that perhaps that was why he didn’t belong on the task force. Starsky had countered with the suggestion that if Farver had a problem with it, he could take it up with Dobey. The response was that since Dobey had obviously made a bad judgement call in letting Hutch get involved, that would be pointless. Starsky then suggested that if Farver really couldn’t handle the idea, they could take the discussion outside and settle it once and for all. At that point, Jim Nedloe had intervened, reasonably stating that this was the task force Dobey assembled and the Chief approved, and so therefore the whole discussion was academic.
“We got everybody rounded up so we could make a decision about how to proceed with a couple of new developments,” Jack began. He explained the suspected connection with Ben Forest and the possibility of Evan Jordan being the elusive “Curtis.” Kennedy, a soft-spoken man with reddish hair and a close-cropped beard, was the first to speak.
“His mother’s name is Renee Curtis—she married some guy in Palm Springs a couple of years ago.”
“Odd he’d use it then,” Starsky commented.
“Not if he’s playing with us,” Shemanski added. “If this is some kind of convoluted game to him.”
“You mean intentionally giving us clues?” Hutch clarified.
“And waiting to see how long it takes the dumb cops to figure it out,” Christine spoke up.
Little did they know, if this was the case, that he had also already provided a clue to his paternity. Hutch squirmed in his seat, and Starsky picked up on his discomfort. There was no way to spare Hutch the backlash when Jordan was arrested, if in fact he was the one sending the veiled threats of revealing the drug incident. Starsky resisted his almost automatic response to Hutch’s distress signals and kept the hand that wanted to gravitate to the other’s arm firmly in his lap. Instead, he stood up, ostensibly to get coffee. Farver played right into his hands by settling into the vacant chair. The other detective had a decidedly childish streak in him, and Starsky played it like a maestro as he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot they had “borrowed” from the squad room. He returned to sit on the arm of Hutch’s chair. After he’d had a swallow or two of the coffee, the expected hand gravitated up, snitched it out of his grasp and drank from it.
“How was his mother about all this when you two talked to her?” Jim asked Kennedy.
“Shocked. Horrified. Complete denial. Essentially denouncing her own mother as some kind of senile old fool who was ruining her son’s life by causing this whole mess.”
“Swell.” Jack got up and started pacing. That was a short-lived activity in the cramped quarters. “I think we should ask the grandmother about Forest.”
“Agreed,” Hutch responded, forfeiting the coffee cup to Starsky again with a knowing glance and the ghost of a grin.
“All in favor,” Christine said, encouraging a show of hands. It was unanimous.
“You two want to do the honors?” Jack asked Starsky and Hutch.
“If that’s agreeable to everyone,” Starsky responded. There were nods in all directions.
“I guess it’s back to Granny’s place then,” Hutch concluded, as Starsky relinquished his seat on the arm and Hutch rose from the chair in almost one coordinated gesture.
* * * *
Hutch had said very little during the drive to Grace Jordan’s estate. Starsky had gone on about something, but Hutch had to guiltily admit to himself he’d tuned him out shortly after leaving the precinct. His whole career lay in Evan Jordan’s hands, and there was little reason to believe that a serial killer, the man who had killed his fiancée, the same nut who had ordered and watched the attack on Starsky with such relish, would refrain from blowing his cover. There was no use drawing any security from the fact that no one at the department thus far knew about the items he’d received in the mail but Starsky and Dobey. They’d all know the whole story soon enough. His days riding in this seat were numbered…
“…it doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything.”
“What?” Hutch realized he was supposed to respond somehow, and he saw little point in faking it. Starsky would know.
“I guess it boils down to one thing—me and thee, partner. Jordan can say what he wants. We’ll deal with it.” Starsky stopped the Torino in the circle drive of the house. Hutch just smiled faintly at his partner, and they got out of the car and headed for the entrance.
Grace Jordan was reading a book, seated near her fireplace when the maid led the two detectives back to the living room where they had met with her previously.
“Have you found Evan?” she asked immediately, laying the book aside.
“No, Mrs. Jordan, but we need some further information from you.” Starsky paused. “It’s regarding Evan’s father. His birth certificate lists him as ‘unknown,’ but I’m sure you know who it is.”
“Yes, I do.”
“And?” Hutch prompted.
“Ben Forest. He’s dead now. He passed away a couple of years ago.”
“He died in prison. We’re very familiar with Ben Forest,” Starsky explained.
“Why does that matter now?”
“It could be significant to the case,” Hutch replied. He hoped she wouldn’t ask for an explanation of how it would be significant. Maybe she already knew.
“Evan was very close to his father, strangely enough. He wasn’t around much for the boy, but despite every other despicable thing about him, he seemed to genuinely love his son.”
“How about your daughter—how did she feel toward him?”
“Surprisingly agreeable. He supported them both very well, and tried to see the boy whenever he could. She felt he handled an awkward situation the best possible way. In a sense, I suppose I must agree with that.”
“He was in touch with his father after he was arrested?” Hutch asked.
“You mean after the two of you arrested him?” She smiled at their startled expressions. “I read the papers, detectives. I remember which policemen arrested my grandson’s father.”
“You knew about this and you didn’t think to mention it before?” Starsky prodded.
“I knew but I didn’t see how it related to anything, and I didn’t want Evan to receive biased treatment. Ben wanted to adopt the boy, give him his name. Neither my daughter nor I would permit that. At least this way, he was distanced from the negative aspects of being part of the Forest…family business.”
“Was he part of that at any time?” Hutch asked.
“I don’t think so. He was just a teenager when Ben was arrested. His father’s incarceration was very hard for him to accept. He harbored a great deal of anger over it. The fact his father was a criminal was a mere detail in his mind.” She paused a moment. “What led you to the connection?”
“Family resemblance. Evan looks just like his father,” Starsky responded.
“I keep hoping he’ll call me. I would tell him to give himself up, go to the police before this all ends in tragedy.” She shook her head. “I don’t understand how this happened. I know Evan was deeply affected by his father’s death, but to murder three women? And in such a macabre manner?” She took a deep breath and sighed. “He was a good boy for the most part—a few of the usual scrapes. I worried about him visiting his father in prison, spending so much time with him…but how do you influence someone to commit crimes like those?”
“Can’t answer that, Mrs. Jordan.” Starsky moved toward the door, and Hutch followed his lead. “Thank you for your time today.”
“Is this information meaningful at all to your investigation?”
“Obviously if Evan has a significant connection to a major crime figure, living or dead, it could affect his ability to go into hiding, or possibly give us some insight into where he might be,” Hutch explained. Starsky was relieved that he’d picked up the ball and run with it, because beyond the heroin issue, nothing was coming into focus as a major point of interest where Jordan’s parentage was concerned.
“You will notify me if you find him?” she asked. Starsky found this amusing, as the entire Western world would be notified when he was found, via blaring headlines and hordes of TV reporters clogging every municipal building remotely connected to the criminal justice process.
“As soon as possible,” Hutch replied.
* * * *
The rest of the day was spent reorganizing the manhunt to search for Ben Forest’s son. This meant hunting down all his old contacts, checking out all his favorite hiding places and activating the snitch network accordingly. A hasty strategy meeting of the task force was called to map out specific plans and assign projects to each of the four pairs of detectives.
Farver and Kennedy drew the short straw to handle the paperwork. Since Walling had found the lead in the first place, and she and her equally junior partner, Shemanski, had been dumped on mercilessly with hotline assignments and detail work, it seemed only fair to let them get a little field experience.
Walling and Shemanski would question the listing of Forest’s minor known associates and assorted “muscle.”
Nedloe and Elliot would question the higher-ranking members of Forest’s organization, and also investigate those who had been suspected of having ties to the crime boss but had never actually been arrested.
Starsky and Hutch ended up with activating the snitch network, since they were voted to have the superior set of street contacts. They would also visit Ben Forest’s old haunts and hideouts and follow up on the whereabouts and new businesses of any proprietors who had since closed their doors.
After talking to every low-life snitch that ever owed them a favor, Starsky and Hutch staggered in through the side door and nearly collided with each other in the attempt to procure a beer out of the refrigerator. Wordlessly, they plodded back to the TV room and sprawled there, Hutch slouched in a chair and Starsky on the couch.
“I feel like a second year rookie,” Starsky grumbled from the spot where his face was semi-buried in a sofa pillow.
“Why second-year?” Hutch retorted, equally lackluster.
“‘Cause first year I woulda thought this was a big deal next to helping little kids cross the street alone and answering calls about barking dogs.”
“What time is it?” Hutch asked, yawning and sliding further down in the chair.
“Two, I think. It was about ten-to in the car, so I figure by now…”
“Don’t strain yourself and look at your watch.”
“Look at your own.” Starsky rolled onto his side, facing the back of the couch.
“Do you know how many snitches we have?”
“Too damn many.”
“How many junkies do you suppose we saw today?”
“Huh?” Starsky flopped over on his back and looked over at Hutch. His partner was staring straight ahead, as if lost in his own thoughts.
“Junkies? Hypes?”
“Quite a few, I s’pose.”
“It’s easy, sitting here in this house, in clean clothes…to be real judgmental.”
“What’re you driving at?” Starsky had the sinking feeling his delicious drowsiness wasn’t going to be sated anytime soon.
“I was one of them for awhile.”
“Damn it, Hutch, that isn’t true.”
“How do you know? How do we know how those people got started? And whether or not there was anyone there to care if they got started or to try and stop them?” Hutch took another gulp of his beer and closed his eyes. “We could lose everything, Starsk. One word from Jordan, and it’s over.”
“Provided they take the word of a serial killer over a cop.”
“We’re talking about IA—Simonetti. Besides, if Jordan had one photo, he probably has a lot more. I’m sure his father armed him well.”
“Let’s not assume the worst—”
“Starsky, I’m going to be unemployed soon. Worst case scenario—we’ll both be unemployed soon. Not to mention having it splattered all over the damned newspapers.”
“We’ll take the blows as they fall, buddy. No point in borrowing trouble.”
“If you can get out of this with your job, do it. I don’t want to take you down with me.”
“If they take your badge over this, I’m going to be right behind you. None of this was your fault and you don’t deserve to be punished for the sins of Ben Forest.”
Starsky watched Hutch’s expression, which seemed unchanged. Something twisted inside Starsky as he noted the passage of time on his partner’s face. Hutch didn’t look old by any stretch of the imagination, but he was changing. Starsky imagined he probably was too, but then, when you confront yourself in the mirror every morning, you don’t notice the changes. “Hutch?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop worrying about it.”
“Sure.” Hutch snorted an ugly little laugh.
“I mean it. You’re not alone in this. I promise you, somehow, it’ll be okay.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the fact you want to make this better somehow, buddy. It’s just that there are some things in this world beyond your control, and this is one of them.”
“No, it’s not beyond my control. It’s not beyond my control to say we’ll face it together, and we’ll get by somehow. Even if it all crashes around our ears. They can fire us, put it on the front page of the paper—so what? They can’t give us the death penalty over it. We’ll start over. Other people have lost everything and had to start over and they’ve done it. We will too.”
“Okay.” Hutch rested his head against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. Starsky relinquished the comfort of his couch and knelt next to Hutch’s chair. The other man started a little at the presence of his partner, who rested his chin on his folded arms on the arm of the chair and stared up at him.
“I can handle anything they’d throw at us except splittin’ us up, and they don’t have a rule on their books that can accomplish that one. So I’m not worried.”
“What about the house, buddy?” Hutch finally moved his arm so his hand rested on Starsky’s back. “We’re so tight for money now that our only hope is our raise next year.”
“I don’t wanna lose that. But I can do without it. The only thing that really…scares me…” Starsky paused, as if the next words were either too frightening or too personal to actually utter, but he finally finished, “are things like, well, like when you were sick…” Starsky never had to mention the plague by name. Both knew what it meant when Starsky simply said “when you were sick.” “I couldn’t do anything about that… ‘cept watch you die.”
“You did do something about it,” Hutch responded quietly.
“Callendar did something about it. I could try all I wanted, but I didn’t have the power to save your life.” Starsky paused again, and Hutch moved his hand lightly back and forth. While the plague wasn’t a happy memory for Hutch, it was just that. To Starsky, the mere mention of it was like a cross to a vampire. “Ever since that…I…I guess I know what’s important. Simonetti and all his goons can’t touch that. So that’s why I’m not worried—and I don’t want you t’be either.” Hutch looked down at the sincere pair of eyes that were studying him so intently. How he’d prayed for those eyes to open in that sterile ICU room, so many days after Gunther’s hit men had almost closed them forever.
“Guess we’re okay then, huh?” Hutch asked in a choked whisper, feeling more emotion than he’d realized was there. He watched Starsky’s face break into a broad smile.
“That’s the spirit,” he said softly. He turned his head to rest it sideways on his crossed arms. The almost unconscious motion of Hutch’s hand started easing the discomfort in Starsky’s left shoulder. The old injury had acted up ever since the incident with Curtis’s goons. His arms had been pulled back or yanked around so many times that the occasional soreness resulting from the shooting in an Italian restaurant years earlier had been making more regular appearances lately. “Mmmm,” he purred. “You’re almost as good as the girls at Sunset Massage.” Starsky chuckled a little as the hand that had been moving back and forth across his upper back froze.
“And you’re an authority on the girls at Sunset Massage, I suppose?”
“Well, bein’ a cop, you hear things…” Starsky waggled his brows a little.
“You’re worse than a old hound. Next you’ll want me to scratch behind your ears.”
“If you feel up to it,” Starsky quipped, still not moving.
“Shoulder been bad lately? Kind of looked like you were favoring it.” Hutch resumed the previous motion, and felt Starsky relax under it.
“Kind of. Oh, that feels good. You can forget the ears if you want,” he quipped with a little smile. Hutch kept it up for a few more seconds, then ruffled Starsky’s hair before he stood.
“Come on. Let’s go turn in before you nod off there.” He offered a hand to pull the other up, which Starsky accepted with his right hand, letting his left arm have a little rest and enjoy the benefits of the mini-massage that had relaxed the sore muscles.
“Gettin’ old,” Starsky groaned as he was pulled to his feet and followed Hutch’s slow-paced walk toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 12
All I have is all I need,
And it all comes down to you and me…
The manhunt for Evan Jordan became more time-consuming, but was still not generating any new leads. Those who had been tied in to Ben Forest’s organization were either unfamiliar with his illegitimate son or were too smart to rat on the son of their former leader. One thing that became obvious to Nedloe and Elliot during their discussions with the former leadership of the Forest empire was that the man had left his minions well remembered in his will, and his “upper echelon” still policed the lower ranks. Power had merely shifted to Daniel Forest, his younger brother. This man somehow managed to maintain what appeared to be a legitimate law practice for big ticket divorce cases with one hand and pull the strings of his brother’s crime empire with the other. All the while, no one could tie him in to anything illegal. But everyone knew him just the same.
Starsky managed to keep his own and his partner’s spirits out of the dumps most of the time. The case was interesting, even if it was threatening to topple their entire lives at any moment. The network that had survived the gangster’s demise was impressive, and depressingly clean in terms of criminal records.
Thanksgiving rolled around, and Starsky’s “little gathering” had blossomed into a pot luck dinner for sixteen people which included Cecile, Mel, Sally and Paul Pomeroy, the Dobeys, Jim and Dorothy Nedloe and their two sons, Huggy, and Christine Walling. Hutch had been surprised by that final addition, as the distance between the attractive blonde and his partner had been well-defined since the infamous swatting incident. During the Forest investigation, however, the two of them seemed to find more and more reasons to “compare notes.”
“Have you ever actually done a turkey before?” Starsky asked his partner as they loaded a prodigious bird into their grocery store shopping cart.
“No, but I have a cook book at home.” Hutch continued pushing the cart toward the fresh vegetables.
“I still think we ought to take Sally up on her offer to do the bird.”
“We’re hosting the party, Starsk—which was your idea, incidentally. We will be doing the turkey and the stuffing.”
“Stuffing? I don’t know how to make stuffing.”
“Here’s a list. Go get this stuff.”
“This is the stuffing list?”
“Yup. I found it in—”
“Same cook book as the turkey?”
“Right.” Hutch smiled as he began selecting the best-looking tomatoes.
Starsky gathered the supplies on his list, resisting the temptation to stop by the boxed foods and pick up a couple boxes of Stove Top Instant and call it good. He met Hutch near the check-out aisles and dumped his armload in the cart.
“Christine’s doing the cranberry sauce, right?” Hutch clarified.
“Yeah. She said it’s her specialty.”
“That was the last item on the potluck list no one volunteered for—you sure you didn’t invite her just to get out of making it ourselves?”
“Maybe she said it was her specialty just so she could come—ever think’a that?”
“I’m sure she had to drag the invitation out of you.” Hutch spotted the shortest line and headed for it. As most short lines do, it moved at half the speed of the line next to it, which was twice as long.
“We should probably be doing that.” Starsky nodded toward the woman ahead of them who was counting out a massive stack of coupons.
“Clipping coupons? Why doesn’t the mental picture of you clipping coupons and bargain-hunting work in my mind?”
“Didn’t say it’d be fun. Just a thought.” Starsky started examining the headlines on one of the tabloids. “We made Expose,” Starsky announced, calling Hutch’s attention to the copy he was holding. The cover screamed: “West Coast Serial Killer Son of Crime Lord.”
“Great. Didn’t take long, did it?” Hutch read the cheesy article over his partner’s shoulder.
“Nice photo of Dobey,” Starsky quipped, referring to a picture of Dobey in motion down the courthouse steps with a hand partially over the camera lens.
“At least they didn’t rehash everything about Sandra and me again.”
“Oh, not so fast. ‘One of the lead detectives on the case, Sergeant Ken Hutchinson, lost his fiancée to The Bridegroom in April. Some question has been raised as to the appropriateness of Sgt. Hutchinson’s involvement in the task force, which has, thus far, failed to apprehend the killer.’ Terrific.” Starsky stuck it back in the rack and moved up toward the register as the coupon queen finally paid for her staggering order and left. He unloaded most of the cart until it came to the assorted items Hutch had in the upper part of the basket. He tossed each one to Starsky, who caught most items with one hand, barely looking at his partner to know they were coming. This seemed to amuse the cashier greatly. You oughtta see us in a gunfight, Starsky thought to himself, smiling a little.
Hutch took the lead in the turkey project. This meant, however, that he delegated the stuffing duties to Starsky, who was still complaining at the injustice of being the one to have to stick his hands up a dead bird’s butt to cram mushy globs of wet bread inside it. Hutch merely cackled a little evilly and informed his partner that life wasn’t fair.
Starsky briefly considered stuffing the bird with popcorn-laced dressing, but since a houseful of guests would be counting on it for dinner, he refrained.
The smells of food permeated the old house to all corners, the sound of parades blared from the living room where the guys had moved the TV the night before, figuring many of the guests would want to catch the parades or at least parts of the football games. Cal and Rosie worked on setting the table, as the Dobeys arrived first. Edith brought with her a number of delicacies, including her famous nut bread, a bean casserole, and the pasta salad—at Starsky’s request. Even if it had nothing to do with Thanksgiving, it never hurt to have a little taste of pepperoni and Italian seasonings.
It wasn’t long before the Pomeroys arrived, and so Dobey had company in the living room in front of the TV. When Christine Walling arrived, she insisted on joining Cal and Rosie on kitchen duty, helping stir a few last minute items cooking on the stove and carry things to the big dining room table. Cecile arrived shortly after Christine, bearing pies and whipped topping for dessert.
Huggy’s contribution to the event was wine for dinner and an assortment of snacks for those souls hardy enough to face eating anything during the football game in the evening.
By two o’clock, the table was laden with food and surrounded by hungry people, including the two young Nedloe boys, who had endured almost all they could take of the smell of food without having any. Rosie, only slightly older than the others, was exercising the newfound maturity of her 11 years, refraining from any preliminary reaching or whining about waiting.
“Before we dive in, does anybody want to say anything?” Starsky asked. In their family, it was tradition to go around the table, each coming up with something they were thankful for. Not wanting to put the guests on the spot, he left the suggestion open-ended.
“I do,” Rosie volunteered, much to her parents’ amusement. “I’m thankful for Mommy and Daddy and Cal, and for my new teacher in math, because the old one was driving us crazy,” she rolled her eyes a little, and a quiet laugh ran through the group, “and for Starsky and Hutch moving in here, ’cause now I can come over and visit more often.” She got a smile and wink from both her adopted uncles.
“I’m thankful for the invitation to join you all today,” Christine began, a little reluctantly. Shyness wasn’t part of her usual demeanor, but she seemed hesitant to speak. She did so regardless. “This is my first Thanksgiving…since my parents died in a car accident last year. I just wanted you all to know that I appreciate sharing today with you.” Starsky, who was sitting next to her, reached over and took her hand.
“Each year I’m thankful for my wonderful family, the blessings of good health, and all the hard work and dedication of the men in my department,” Dobey began, “even if a few of them have their tendencies to bend procedure from time to time,” he continued, looking pointedly toward Starsky and Hutch, who exchanged innocent expressions. “I wish continued safety and happiness for all of us in the coming year.”
“Since this whole case began—and I promise I’m not going to talk shop,” Hutch hastened to add, bringing another little laugh to the crowd, “I’ve been spending a lot of time concentrating on what I’ve lost, the difficult times it’s caused…but I am grateful now for the chance to look at all the things I have to be thankful for—wonderful friends who came forward when times were bad, a new home, a job that I both love and hate, but love more,” Jim, Starsky, and Dobey all chuckled on that point, “and for a partner and best friend I couldn’t think of the right words to thank. Despite all the bad times during this last year, I feel blessed, and I’m thankful for that.” Hutch smiled at his partner, who was blushing, most likely to his ears as they lurked under his hair.
“I’m thankful for good friends,” Huggy began, “who make good customers, that all these cops I hang around with haven’t figured out something to arrest me for,” he scanned the group and found smiles among his law enforcement friends, “and for bein’ here today, and meetin’ some lovely ladies, which was an added bonus.”
“We’re thankful for family and friends, good health, and new neighbors we get along with who’re finally fixing this place up,” Mel spoke for the Pomeroys.
“I guess a lot of what I’m thankful for would sound like I was just repeating what Hutch said,” Starsky began, “but I am grateful for the friendship of the people here today, because it’s gotten me over some rough spots lately. I’m thankful for my family, even though they couldn’t all be here and for Hutch, because he’s always here.” Starsky nudged Hutch, who was sitting on the side Christine hadn’t claimed. They both grinned.
A few more reflections on family, friends and good health were shared before the squirming children, and a vociferous growl from Starsky’s stomach signaled that it was time to say a final grace, carve the turkey and let the party begin.
Dinner was delicious and left everyone groaning sufficiently. Slowly, the table-dwellers dispersed to the living room or kitchen depending on whether their destiny was cleaning up or watching football. Since both Christine and Sally turned out to be football fans, Cecile, Edith and Dorothy volunteered for the kitchen duty. Rosie and Cal were excused based on prior servitude before dinner. Starsky and Hutch flipped for who would take kitchen duty, since adding two more would have been more a hindrance than a help. Hutch seemed delighted to “lose” the toss, since Cecile was among those who would be sharing cramped quarters around the sink.
Since dinner had been a rib-expanding event, it had been decided to have pie and coffee in the evening during the final hours of the football game. Cecile surprised Hutch a little by drafting his partner to help serve dessert. She said since Hutch had already done his duty, he should be able to relax and it was Starsky’s turn.
“These pies look great,” Starsky commented, adding artistic swirls of whipped topping as Cecile placed each piece on the plates.
“Dave, I had an idea. Last week, I came by to see Ken, and he showed me his paintings. They were really excellent.”
“That’s what I try to tell him.” Starsky aimed the spray can and created another swirl.
“Remember Ken and I went to that opening at the Barrington Gallery? Well, I helped my friend get her show there—Lucy Barrington is a close friend of mine. I’d really like to set something up for Ken, but I know he won’t go for it.”
“Did you ask him?”
“Yes—I even told him I thought he could sell some of his stuff.”
“What’d he say?”
“What he always says— ‘oh, get serious.’ Well, I am.”
“What exactly do you want me to do?”
“I’d like to set something up and surprise him. If he once could see that his work was well-received—”
“Don’t do that, Cecile. He isn’t going to appreciate it like you think he will.” Starsky stopped what he was doing and turned to face her. “His art is very…I don’t know, private to him, I guess. He’s real hesitant to show it to anybody.”
“Because he thinks everything he does is only mediocre at best. Like his singing—he gets nervous about doing that too, but listen to how good he is.”
“Just because he’s good doesn’t mean he’d enjoy being shoved out on stage at Carnegie Hall. I don’t think he’s going to enjoy having his paintings shown, and he’s not going to like someone going behind his back. Besides, you’d have to get your hands on the paintings first, and he’ll never go for it.”
“Dave, come on. He told me that his job could be threatened if this whole drug thing comes out. He might not appreciate it at first, but if he could catch on as an artist, still make a living—I think he’d feel a lot more…more of a sense of worth about himself if the worst happens. Think about it—wouldn’t it be easier than for him to have to sit around unemployed and let you support him?”
“That wouldn’t be the case for long, knowing Hutch.” Starsky turned back to topping the desserts.
“I’m serious about this. If you would just let me take, say, six or eight canvasses—”
“Without Hutch’s permission?” Starsky shook his head. “He’d kill me.”
“He’d thank you if this worked. And I feel very confident it will. Please?”
“Cecile, I can’t just hand over his stuff without asking.”
“You’re not giving me his diary to print on the front of the newspaper. These are paintings, for God’s sake. It’s not like they’re kinky nudes or something. He doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of. Please help me give him this chance. You know he never believes in himself the way he should.”
“What makes you say that?” Starsky was surprised at the observation, considering how little time Cecile had actually spent with his partner.
“He’s just very…I don’t know…shy about praise, and you can tell he genuinely doesn’t think he deserves it. If he could once see how his work was received—and if the worst does happen with the job—Dave, we could be giving him an opportunity for a whole new, very wonderful life.”
“I don’t know, Cecile. I still don’t feel right about this.”
“Just let me take a few canvasses to Lucy. If she doesn’t want to do a show, Ken never has to know. If she does, after he cools off a little, he’ll thank us both. Please help me do this for him.”
“Pie just about ready?” Hutch entered the kitchen, and both almost physically jumped. “You two look guilty as hell. Been eating the whipped topping out of the can again, Starsk?” He picked up a couple of plates and headed toward the living room.
Their conversation effectively cut short, Cecile didn’t have time to work Starsky over again about letting her take the canvasses. She felt sure that they would be shown at the small Barrington Gallery. They were good, and Lucy was a friend. Cecile managed to give Starsky enough significant stares during the evening that she knew he felt the pressure to go along with the plan. If he mentioned it to Hutch, he knew as well as she did that he’d squelch the concept in its infancy.
Hutch followed the Nedloes outside when they were ready to leave, and Cecile honed in on Starsky one more time when he started carrying dirty dishes to the kitchen.
“David, please, help me do this for Ken.”
“I don’t know,” he responded, hesitantly.
“Just let me take six of them. I can sneak them down the back stairs if you can keep him out of the kitchen. Sometimes, when you love someone, you have to do something that will be good for them that they don’t necessarily agree with. If Ken loses his job, he’s going to lose a lot of his self-respect. Unfortunately, that happens. If he had something like this happening in his life, it would help fill that void.” Cecile looked at him pleadingly, and with a sick feeling known as his better judgement gnawing at Starsky’s stomach, he told her to go ahead and get the paintings she wanted to take. As soon as he’d agreed to it, he regretted it. But a lot of what she said was true, and Hutch should have that opportunity to be recognized for his talents.
The last of the guests, including Cecile with her secret cargo safely in the trunk of her Cadillac, finally left near midnight. Most of the dishes had been washed, and all that remained was to pick up a few pieces of debris from the football watchers, move the TV back to the TV room, and move the furniture back to its original pattern.
“That was a pretty good party.” Hutch leaned behind the TV and re-connected it in its usual spot.
“Yeah. I was surprised to hear about Christine’s parents. I didn’t know that about her. Kind of explains why she was such a pain in the ass when she first made detective.”
“Must’ve all happened at the same time—job change, the accident. That’s rough. The ice seems to be breaking between you two now.”
“If she doesn’t sue me for harassment, I might ask her out sometime.”
“I think that was a defense mechanism, don’t you? She had to be a little uneasy in a squad room full of men. And you and your newspapers are going to get in trouble one of these days.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Not all women go for that.”
“You, being an expert.” Starsky rolled his eyes as he pushed one end of the living room couch back into place.
“I have my moments.” Hutch dropped into the chair he was moving. “I’m glad they finally all went home.”
“I thought you said it was a good party.”
“It was. But it was a long party. Listen…” he paused. “Silence.” A peaceful smile crossed Hutch’s face.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. It was fun, though.” Starsky sat on the couch and picked a popcorn puff out of the crease between the cushions, tossing it on the coffee table in front of him.
“How’s your mother?” Hutch knew it had weighed heavily on his partner’s mind all day, and now he seemed even more pensive.
“I called her this morning. She said the doctor thinks it might be an ulcer—if so, it isn’t heart. She’s supposed to find out Monday.”
“That’s great. I mean, not that she has that, but that it isn’t anything worse.”
“I hope that’s all it is.”
“We’ll keep good thoughts for that, then.”
“Hutch—I meant what I said at dinner—about you always bein’ there? I didn’t want to get all soapy and sickening, but…I still wanted you to know that…that you’re as much my family as anybody back in New York. Probably more.” He looked up to see Hutch smiling.
“Ditto for me, buddy.” Hutch slumped in the chair. “Sandra would have probably had Elizabeth in time for today.” He rubbed his eyes, and Starsky realized he had been holding back tears. “I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this today.”
“Do what? Miss Sandy? Mourn your daughter? That’s natural, babe. Nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
“I was just wondering, you know, what it would be like…” Hutch took a deep breath. “What it would be like to hold my daughter. She was a concept before…and now it seems like…more real somehow because she would have been here now.” He stood up. “I think I’ll turn in.” Starsky stood up also and walked over toward his partner.
“So much has happened, it makes it seem like a long time. But it was only April that she died, buddy. I still miss her, too.” Starsky rested a hand on Hutch’s shoulder. “Holidays are hard when you’ve lost somebody. The first set of ’em after Terry…I hated every minute of it. Not because everybody, you especially, didn’t bend over backwards to make it nice for me. Just because I wanted her there and she wasn’t.”
“Thanks.” Hutch mirrored Starsky’s gesture, resting his hand on the other’s shoulder.
“For what, pal?”
“Being here, I guess. For caring so much.”
“That comes easy, buddy. I’m just givin’ back what I get.”
CHAPTER 13
Take back that sad word “goodbye,”
Bring back the joy to my life…
I can’t forget the day you left
Time is so unkind,
Life is so cruel without you here beside me…
Un-break my heart,
Say you love me again,
Undo this hurt you caused
When you walked out the door
And walked out of my life…
Most of the legwork done by the detectives prior to Thanksgiving in the effort to track Ben Forest’s son had led to disappointing results. Old known associates were smart enough not to talk if they, in fact, knew anything. Former hired muscle either invoked their rights not to be “harassed” by the cops or claimed ignorance that Forest had even had a son. In many cases, they probably really didn’t know.
As usual, the snitch network yielded a number of pieces of information, of varying levels of importance. Since this had been Starsky and Hutch’s part of the legwork, they found themselves spending most of their time in the underbelly of town, chasing down leads on a variety of people fitting Jordan’s general description. There was a more promising lead that took them out to an abandoned farm on the outskirts of town, but they found no signs that it had been recently inhabited or disturbed. It belonged to a shirttail cousin of Ben Forest’s, and had been used for some of their drug operations several years ago.
Starsky was typing up the last of the reports on their fruitless activities when he received a call he had been both anticipating and dreading. Cecile was on the other end of the line.
“I got the show all set up. Lucy was really positive about Ken’s work, and she wants to show it this Sunday afternoon. I know it’s not a big, glamorous Saturday night opening, but she said she usually draws a very good crowd on Sunday, and many of them are interested in making purchases. She also says she sometimes has the best luck with new artists on Sundays.”
“Cecile, I still don’t know about this.” Starsky chewed his lower lip nervously, scanning the squad room to be sure Hutch still hadn’t returned from picking up their food from the cafeteria. “I think he’s gonna be furious.”
“But it’s too late to worry about that now! It’s all set. She’s printing up flyers and—”
“Flyers? Holy sh— I mean, you didn’t say anything about flyers!” Starsky’s voice was quiet but high and strained.
“How else is she supposed to advertise the showing?”
“She isn’t supposed to at all! I wanna back out. I gave you the paintings to show in the first place, and now I want them all back. Right now! I wanna call it off.”
“You’re just getting cold feet, and that’s silly. This is all going to work out great, and after he cools off, Ken’s going to thank both of us.”
“I don’t think so. Look, I made a real bad mistake here, and I want to—”
“She’s printing the flyers, she’s already scheduled it—just relax. I’m telling you, this is going to be the start of something wonderful for Ken. I just feel sure of it. Think how much better it will be for him to flow smoothly into another pursuit if the worst happens with his job? We’ve been over all this, Dave. I thought you were comfortable with the idea of helping him get something to fall back on.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“So I gathered. I promise you, it’ll all work out for the best. Now, I’m going to call and invite both of you to come to an art show Sunday, so go along with it when Ken asks you.”
“Right,” Starsky replied, giving up the fight as he saw Hutch coming through the double doors with lunch.
“I’ll be in touch. Try to keep a straight face when I call Ken. Is he there?”
“Yup.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.” She broke the connection, leaving Starsky to ponder the impending explosion on Sunday.
“Bad news?” Hutch asked, setting a plastic-covered plate in front of Starsky.
“No. Well, sort of. Ah—Merle’s trying to track a decent loaner for me so I can leave the Torino with him for a few days.”
“No luck, eh?” Hutch was unwrapping his sandwich, apparently buying the lie. Starsky already hated this situation. He never lied to Hutch, even about the little things.
“He’s still working at it.” Starsky unwrapped his own lunch and picked at it.
“Something wrong?” Hutch watched his partner’s blank expression as he looked up at him. “With the sandwich?”
“Oh, no, nothing. Guess I’m just not as hungry as I thought.” He made the decision to seal his fate then and there, to tell Hutch what he’d done and hope he would be forgiven. “Hutch, I—” Dobey came barging out of his office with a shouted edict that there was a stand-off going on at a downtown jewelry store between armed robbers and police, and he wanted both of them, as well as several others he rounded up, to get down there ASAP to help the black and white units on the scene.
Confessions would have to wait.
* * * *
The jewelry store incident occupied the entire afternoon that Wednesday, and by the time it was resolved and they were on their way back to Metro, Starsky had lost his nerve. He’d have to face the music sooner or later, but now it seemed like later was the better option.
Cecile didn’t call Hutch until Thursday morning, but she enthusiastically convinced him that the art showing on Sunday was something he shouldn’t miss. The works of an exciting new area artist were being shown, and would he please bring Starsky along, even though Hutch’s partner was not known for haunting art galleries in his spare time. She told him that the gallery owner wanted to have as strong a showing as possible when the art critics made their appearance, if in fact, they did. Reluctantly, he asked his partner to come along, and Starsky accepted, almost too quickly.
Starsky put in four days of hell between the Wednesday call from Cecile and the art show on Sunday. He had managed to snatch the one flyer that had made its way to the “Arts & Events” bulletin board in the cafeteria. His stomach had twisted into a knot when he read the bright yellow notice, declaring the debut of a brand new area artist named Ken Hutchinson. If ever he’d seen his life flash before his eyes, it was at that moment. Hutch was going to kill him. Dead.
“Cecile certainly seems enthused about this artist, whoever he or she is,” Hutch commented as he drove toward the Barrington Gallery. Starsky remained silent. All he wanted was to go to the gallery, take his tongue-lashing and get it over with.
Hutch was beginning to worry about Starsky. His sullenness and moodiness had started mid-week and he wasn’t getting any better. Assuming it would all reveal itself sooner or later, Hutch tried to concentrate on enjoying the art showing. Cecile had insisted on meeting them at the gallery, so Hutch found a parking spot nearby and led the way with Starsky trailing a little behind him.
He froze at the entrance, and Starsky felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. There, in the window, was a painting Hutch had done of a desert landscape, with a little card under it bearing his name. Above it was a larger sign advertising the showing of his works.
“What is this?” he demanded of Cecile, who was waiting anxiously inside the door. A few of the patrons heard the raised voice, and were understandably curious. “Ken, before you get angry, I—”
“Before I get angry? Before I get angry? What the hell do you know about this?” He turned to Starsky, who was whiter that the highly glossed enameled trim on the door.
“I, uh, let Cecile, uh, take some canvasses from upstairs.”
“You did what?!” Hutch demanded, his face turning nearly purple. Starsky couldn’t recall seeing him this angry.
“Ken, it isn’t Dave’s fault. I asked him—”
“You stay out of this!” he bellowed at Cecile. “I’m talking to him,” he emphasized, turning back toward Starsky.
“She said she thought—”
“And I don’t want to hear what Cecile did. What did you have to do with this?”
“I let her take the canvasses. I’m sorry, Hutch. I knew it was a bad idea but I thought that—”
“You thought. You decided to just help yourself to some of the most personal possessions I own and display them?! What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I said I was sor—”
“Sorry. Yeah, so I heard. You’re sorry that you took one of the most personal things in my life and hung it in a public place without my permission. Well I’m sorry too, buddy.” There was a very ugly emphasis on the word “buddy.”
“Don’t blame Dave, Ken. It wasn’t his idea,” Cecile tried to speak up, but Hutch was having none of it.
“I trusted you,” he bellowed angrily at Starsky. The past tense sliced into Starsky’s heart like a knife.
“You can still trust me, buddy. I’m sorry I—”
“Trust you? There’s a good joke. Who do we trust time, huh? I guess I’ve been gettin’ that answer wrong all these years.”
“Hutch, don’t, please…”
“Get out of my way.” He pushed past Starsky and started striding toward the car.
“Hutch! Wait a minute!” Starsky rushed down the sidewalk after him, leaving Cecile, Lucy Barrington and a few confused art patrons behind at the gallery.
“Stay away from me!” Hutch kept walking, a little sideways, jabbing a finger toward his contrite partner.
“Hutch, please, wait. Let me explain—” Starsky finally slowed his pace and let Hutch drive off erratically into the slow Sunday traffic.
“Dave, I’m sorry,” Cecile said, a little breathless as she had run to catch up with them.
“Damn it!! I knew it. When I told you to call it off, I knew what I was talking about.” He paced back and forth along the sidewalk.
“He didn’t even go inside to have a look at what’s going on. I’m hearing some positive comments in there and—”
“Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear what just happened? He’s not a little upset, he’s furious. With me.” Starsky shook his head. “What an idiot I was.”
“You were trying to do something positive for him. If he loses his job—”
“He’ll be unemployed. He wouldn’t see that as a reason to share these with the world. He’s right. This is all my fault. I knew better!”
“But if it’s a success, it would be—”
“You just don’t get it, do you? No matter how many rave reviews those paintings might get, I betrayed his trust and…I’ve never done that before.”
“Let me give you a ride home.”
“No thanks. I think you’ve done enough. I’ll get a cab.” Starsky stalked off down the sidewalk, feeling as if he had been used very skillfully by Cecile. If Hutch had accepted the whole concept, she would have been the one to get the glory, which would have been fine by Starsky. The part that wasn’t fine with him is that when Hutch was furious, he was the one taking the heat, while Cecile seemed like a peripheral factor. Since she didn’t know Hutch as well, he’d probably forgive her faster than he would Starsky.
The cab let Starsky out at the curb in front of the house. Hutch’s car was back in the driveway, so at least Starsky had called that one right. He paid the driver and rushed up to the front door, fumbling nervously with his keys and finally opening it and stepping inside. He heard drawers slamming upstairs, and angry footsteps.
“Hutch?” He hurried up to the head of the stairs, then followed the sounds to Hutch’s room. His large suitcase was open on the bed and clothing was being tossed in it from where Hutch stood at his dresser.
“Get out of my face, Starsky.” He didn’t even turn to face his partner.
“Won’t you just let me apologize?”
“Who’s stopping you? You sure as hell don’t ask my permission for anything else!” he bellowed in response.
“I know what I did was wrong about the paintings, but the way Cecile talked about it, giving you something to fall back on if things didn’t work out with this whole Jordan mess—”
“Don’t blame this on Cecile. God, at least have the backbone to take the blame for your own screw-ups without shoving the responsibility off on her. You knew damn well how I felt about those paintings.” Hutch closed the suitcase and pulled it by the handle off the bed. “I trusted you with the most…personal things in my life. And now they’re hanging in a goddamn downtown gallery!” He pushed past Starsky and headed for the back stairs.
“Hutch, come on, please—where’re you goin’?” Starsky was reduced to chasing him down the hall and down the stairs to the back door.
“You’re a hot shot detective. Figure it out.”
“I don’t blame you for being mad at me, but—”
“Thank you for that dispensation.” Hutch started for the door but Starsky stood in front of it.
“Please, let’s just sit down and try to talk this out—”
“Fine. We’ll talk. But we don’t need to go to the trouble of sitting down for it. I trusted you, and you betrayed that. Not only do I not trust you anymore, but right now I could wring your neck! Now I’m going to find another place to stay. In the meantime, you call your buddy Cecile and tell her to stick the sign back in the yard of this stinking, man-eating money trap. I’ve made two huge mistakes in my life. One was trusting you and the second one was moving into the same house with you. I’m correcting both of those right now.”
Hutch noticed that he wasn’t getting any angry responses, only a devastated expression. He almost hesitated to strike the final blow, but then he thought about his paintings, the things that had served the same purpose for him a diary serves for many: a very personal way to work through emotions and feelings. Strangers were analyzing them, dissecting them, planning to purchase pieces of his soul. And Starsky had done this. He continued.
“Don’t look for me tomorrow at work, either. I won’t work with you. I’m putting in for a transfer.”
“Hutch,” Starsky choked out, “please don’t do this.”
“Don’t do what? Don’t be angry?”
“Be angry. Hit me if you want—I have it coming. Just don’t…don’t go like this. Please just forgive me. I’ll do anything, say anything—” Starsky was begging, and that wasn’t like him. It occurred to Hutch through the haze of his anger just how much he’d hurt his partner, but the underlying sense of betrayal wouldn’t allow him to show any mercy.
“You think that you can do anything you want, and if it doesn’t work, you’ll just say ‘I’m sorry’ and it’s okay. Well it’s not okay. Those paintings…you know what those meant to me. How personal they were. I never showed those to anyone but you, and I showed a few to Cecile.”
“A few?”
“A few. I brought down a couple of canvasses I didn’t mind her seeing. You’re the only person…” Hutch felt his own voice breaking a little. “You’re the only person I would have let just browse through them all like that. I didn’t go in that gallery because I didn’t want to know which ones were up there. I sure as hell didn’t want to explain which one I did while I was recovering from the plague, coming to grips with my mortality—which one I did after Gillian died—shit, Starsky, why didn’t you just hang me naked from the stoplight at Lexington and 4th?” Hutch snorted an ugly little laugh. “Of course, I would have preferred that. At least then it’s only the exterior everyone would see, the surface. You hung my whole goddamn soul on the walls of that gallery for everyone to gawk at. I can’t forgive you for that, Starsky. And the fact you didn’t understand that…it undermines everything I thought about our friendship. Now please, get out of my way.”
“Hutch, please don’t leave,” Starsky made one last, nearly whispered plea through the tears that were constricting his throat. Hutch pushed him aside, opened the door and was through it in one relatively smooth gesture. Starsky leaned against the slammed door, listening to the car pull out of the driveway. I don’t trust you…I’m requesting a transfer… He knew he’d made a mistake, knew it before it even happened, but Cecile had acted like she’d seen all the paintings, and so Starsky had felt they couldn’t be that private after all. Why couldn’t Hutch just forgive him this one mistake? All these years, they didn’t mean anything to him. He can just walk away…
* * * *
Hutch checked in to a nearby motel and dumped his suitcase on the bed. Living in a motel would get expensive fast, and until the house was sold and he had his half of the down payment back, he was obligated to keep up his half of the debts. Just like a damn divorce. So how come he gets to stay there free while I’m at a hotel? Because you’re the one who walked out, dummy. He didn’t want you to go, and he sure as hell wouldn’t have gone even if you’d thrown him out the library window. Hutch put a few of his things away and tried to make sense of what had happened. The fact it all happened so fast was his fault. He’d exploded at the sight of his paintings out there for public viewing, and he’d lacerated Starsky like he’d never done before. They’d argued, but he had never purposely worked at hurting him that way. He wanted to make Starsky suffer like he was suffering from what he considered an insensitive violation of his trust.
Yet I know if the situation presented itself right now, he’d die for me without a moment’s hesitation. I remember what it felt like to watch him die in that ICU bed, what it felt like to hold him in a dirty back alley and know that he would be gone in a matter of hours. How I held onto him then, hoping by clutching frantically at the folds of his jacket, I could keep him with me, not let the Angel of Death have him. I wonder if my Angel of Death is on display at the Barrington Gallery? The painting I did while he was recuperating from the poisoning…the ghastly cloaked figure with the blurred face and bony hands…
Your mind is mush, Hutchinson. You need to step back from this and think it through. Cool off a little. Let Starsky sweat a while too. Teach him a lesson. He was wrong in doing what he did. You’re feeling like the parent who punishes his kid and then doesn’t want to see him cry…maybe he deserved the punishment and he deserved to cry, to feel bad… just like Starsky deserved to be hurt back for doing what he did. Or does he?
* * * *
A grim, pale-faced Starsky arrived at work on time Monday morning, only really there because he thought Hutch might have to come in to sign something for his transfer, or to clean out his desk. He’d tried calling every hotel and motel in the area, tried every alias he could think of, and still no Hutch. He’d chosen another alias. He was hiding. For real. He really didn’t want to be found.
Starsky had spent the night tracking his partner, and by dawn, discouraged, had shaved and changed his clothes for work.
A cup of coffee seemed to appear magically in front of him. For just a moment, he harbored the hope that maybe Hutch…
“You look tired, Dave.” Christine sat on the edge of his desk, facing him.
“Didn’t get much sleep last night.” He took a swallow of the coffee. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay?”
“Hutch is gonna ask for a transfer,” he responded, not knowing why it came out so fast. He hadn’t planned on telling her.
“Why?”
“He won’t work with me anymore. We had an argument about…I did something that made him mad, and now he doesn’t want to work with me.”
“He’ll cool off. Hutch wouldn’t work with anybody else and you know it.”
“I thought I knew it.” Starsky shook his head. “You didn’t see the look on his face…you don’t understand how angry he was.”
“I understand that you’re best friends. That endures a lot of garbage.” She smiled reassuringly. “You’ll see. He’ll fume for awhile, then he’ll miss you.”
“I thought I was doing something positive for him, or I never would have done it at all. I thought that if he had something else to do…something to fall back—” He caught himself, noting Christine’s puzzled expression, and realizing he was pouring out his soul and way more of Hutch’s business than he ought to be. The people at work didn’t know about the drug situation, and that was the whole goal at the moment—to keep it that way. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I meant well.”
“What did you do? The way you’re beating yourself up, you’d think you had planted a live grenade in his bed.”
“He’d’a gotten over that faster.” Starsky shook his head. Explaining the paintings and their meaning to Christine seemed like furthering the invasion of Hutch’s privacy he was already guilty of committing. “Let’s just say that I didn’t keep in confidence something I was supposed to, and now he doesn’t trust me anymore. Plain and simple. He’s right, I’m wrong, and I deserve anything I get. I should’ve known better, but, well…” He laughed a little ironically, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“If you meant well, and you apologized, surely Hutch is going to take that into consideration. You don’t throw out years of friendship over one transgression.”
“Tell that to Hutch.” He took another swallow of the coffee. “You put sugar in it.”
“You like it that way, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but you put enough in.” Starsky looked up at her, surprised. He had been so preoccupied when he started drinking it that he hadn’t noticed it was prepared to his taste exactly.
“I just noticed that you like sugar—lots of it—in your coffee. I’m a detective. I’m supposed to have an eye for detail.” She smiled, and he finally chuckled a little.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve got to get downstairs. Grant wants to check out a couple of hotline tips.” She stood up and rested her hand on Starsky’s shoulder briefly. “Whatever this is, it’ll work out.”
“Thanks again, Christine.”
“Hey—why don’t you meet Grant and me for lunch over at Pancho Villa’s? We ought to roll in there about 12:30.”
“I don’t know.”
“Starsky,” she chided him.
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
“And if Hutch shows up and makes a proper apology in the meantime, bring him along.”
“Fat chance. See ya later.”
“You better. 12:30—Pancho Villa’s—bet I can take it hotter than you can,” she challenged, referring to the legendary Starsky appetite for blazing seasonings.
“You’re on,” he replied, laughing a little as she winked and hurried out the door.
Dobey called Starsky into his office by mid-morning and cross-questioned him about Hutch’s whereabouts. Not liking to sound like a couple of bickering children, Starsky was uncomfortable having to explain to Dobey that they’d had a fight and that’s why Hutch was staying away. He finally confessed to Dobey that his partner had even threatened requesting a transfer. Dobey grumbled something to the effect that Bigelow needed an assistant in the property room and that Hutch could come back to being a detective when he grew up.
* * * *
Lunch was a gastrointestinal nightmare, but a diversion, nonetheless. Christine and Grant were good company, and she hadn’t lied about being able to hold her own in the spice wars. They went over the case and talked about the latest press hassles until Christine and Grant were called to a crime scene relating to another of their cases.
Starsky left work early, slightly at loose ends without his partner. They’d planned to follow up a specific roster of leads culled from the hotline, and Starsky spent most of the morning and early afternoon on the phone or in the car doing just that. By late afternoon, his mind was increasingly not on what he was doing, and he gave up on trying to accomplish anything worthwhile. Since Dobey had gone to a seminar for the afternoon, he was able to leave a note that he wasn’t feeling well and escape without further explanation, at least for the moment.
The car awaiting him in the parking lot was the loaner he’d picked up from Merle after lunch—a bright blue Chevette, of all things. He had to laugh at the irony himself. When your day goes downhill, it does so at warp speed.
Pulling up in front of the house was no longer pleasant. Not only was it empty and lonely but it wasn’t going to be his much longer. He would have to call a real estate agent, but he doubted seriously it would be Cecile. Right now, it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other. That would have to be his primary concern until he could get used to the idea of being halved. They had functioned as a unit for so long that Starsky felt as if he were only half a person without his partner. Losing their friendship had broken his heart. Losing their partnership in the same breath had shattered the pieces.
Rosie Dobey was surprised to see Starsky sitting on the front steps in the middle of the afternoon. Since he’d recovered and gone back to work, there was usually no one home on the few occasions she even bothered to check after school. They were both almost always at work until night sometime, so she had stopped making such regular visits. She rode her bike to the six cement steps, and then dragged it up with her so she could lean it against the porch.
“Hi, Starsky!” Since her father had referred to them as “Starsky and Hutch” as long as she could remember, that’s how Rosie always addressed them, eschewing more child-like titles like “Uncle.”
“Hey, Rosie.” The face smiled, but the eyes were the saddest she’d ever seen. He was just sitting there, staring out at the street.
“Is Hutch here?”
“Not anymore.”
“Are you sick? You don’t look like you feel good.” She officiously checked his forehead for any sign of fever. He chuckled a little.
“I’m okay, sweetheart.”
“So where’s Hutch?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I tried to find him, but I don’t know where he went.” He hadn’t realized how odd that answer must sound to Rosie until he looked down into her puzzled face. She had taken up residence next to him on the top step of the porch. “We had a big fight, and he had to go away and cool off.”
“But you’re gonna make up, right?”
“I don’t know, Rosie. I hope so, but I don’t know.”
“What happened?”
“I did something really, really wrong, and I don’t think Hutch can forgive me for it. And I don’t blame him. I was wrong.”
“What did you do?”
“You remember a long time ago when you brought those pictures you’d painted at school in to your dad’s office, and Hutch told you he used to paint too?”
“Yes.” It seemed incredible she’d even remember that minor incident over two years ago. But she did.
“Well, Hutch used to paint quite a lot, and he kept his pictures in the attic. He used to paint when he was feeling something—some strong emotion. So for him, painting was kind of like, I don’t know, keeping a diary. Follow me so far?” She nodded solemnly. “So his paintings were real private to him. A friend of his has a friend who owns an art gallery, and she thought that it might a good idea to show some of Hutch’s paintings—that people might buy them, and he might be able to be an artist.”
“Instead of a cop?”
“Well, yeah, if he wanted to, and if he was successful enough with the paintings. Anyway, she knew he’d never agree to show his work, and I knew that too, but she thought it would be such a really good thing to do for Hutch to give him the chance to show his stuff, maybe get recognized…I agreed to let her take some of his paintings without his permission. When he found out, he was furious. There were his paintings in a gallery for anyone who wanted to to look at.”
“You said you were sorry, didn’t you?”
“Sure I did. And I am. I know it was wrong, but I was just trying to do something nice for Hutch. But that doesn’t make it right for me to have taken something of his without his permission. I’m still the one who’s wrong. It’s just…he said he didn’t trust me anymore, that he didn’t want to work with me, and I don’t know…” Starsky felt his voice shake, and before he knew it, the tears came.
“I think he should forgive you.” Rosie knelt on the porch behind him and put her arms around his neck. “Don’t cry. He won’t stay mad forever.”
“I don’t know about that,” Starsky responded, unable to keep up the cheerful front for her. “How would you feel if somebody posted your diary on a bulletin board for a bunch of people to look at? That’s how Hutch feels.”
“I’d be real mad. But if you love somebody, and they say they’re sorry, and they didn’t mean anything wrong, you should forgive them.”
“I’m sorry, Rosie.” He sniffed loudly and reached up to pat the arms that had encircled his neck. “I’m okay now.” He turned and smiled at her as she returned to her seat next to him on the step.
“It’s okay to feel bad, you know. Mom says that sometimes guys are afraid to cry because they think it makes them look like sissies. I don’t think that.”
“You don’t, huh?” Starsky chuckled a little. “Well, I feel a little bit like a sissy right now. I don’t know what got into me.”
“No you’re not. You’re just sad because Hutch hurt your feelings.”
“No. I’m sad because I made a mistake, and that mistake hurt Hutch’s feelings, and I didn’t get anything I didn’t deserve. Don’t blame Hutch for this one. I made the mistake.”
“But it was a mistake, and you said you were sorry, so now he’s bein’ a jerk to not forgive you.”
“Listen, sweetheart, I don’t want you taking sides between Hutch and me. Even if we don’t work together anymore, or…aren’t friends anymore,” he forced past the lump in his throat, “Hutch still cares about you, and he’s just as much your friend as he was before we had our argument. That’s got nothing to do with you. And I’m not gonna be mad or think you’re betraying me or something if you stay friends with Hutch. I want you to.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t be his friend—but I’m still mad at him.”
Both sat in silence for a few minutes, watching a few neighbors arriving home from work, a few children riding by on bikes heading for home.
“Mom’s making stuffed pork chops tonight. And an oreo cookie pie.” Rosie let the menu settle on Starsky’s mind a minute. Then she nudged him with her elbow. “Come over for dinner?”
“I’ll be okay, Rosie, really. Besides, your mom doesn’t want a surprise dinner guest.”
“I’ll call her first and make sure it’s okay. If it is, will you come?”
“If your mom says okay—but be sure you ask her and let her know it’s all right to say no.”
“Got it.” Rosie went in through the front door and called home from the phone near the stairs. Edith approved of the invitation quickly, so Rosie happily returned to inform Starsky that he should be at their house at 6:00 sharp.
“I’ll be there.” He smiled and waved as she hurried down the walk with her bike.
“Maybe we can play Monopoly after dinner?” she suggested hopefully.
“It’s a date,” he responded. She hurried down the steps and onto the sidewalk, where she mounted the bike and rode quickly toward home.
* * * *
Hutch spent most of his day in righteous indignation, calling a lengthy list of apartment complexes to check their prices. Occasionally, a little voice nagged at the back of his mind that perhaps Starsky didn’t deserve such harsh treatment, but that voice was silenced by the larger sense of exposure and embarrassment he felt over the whole concept of having the paintings shown.
By late afternoon, he drove over to Cecile’s office, cooled off enough to at least be in the same room with her, so he could find out how to retrieve the paintings that had been shown. She led him into a meeting room in the real estate office and shut the door behind them.
“Ken, I’m so sorry about yesterday. I realize now that it was a big mistake.”
“I didn’t come here for apologies, Cecile. I want my canvasses back.”
“You can pick them up from Lucy anytime at the gallery. She’s keeping them in the back room. Two of them sold—but since she didn’t have your permission, she just tagged them and told the buyers she needed the artist’s permission.” The news that two sold took Hutch aback a little, but he didn’t miss a beat. They were his, they were wrongfully taken, and he wanted them back. No one else was going to get their hands on those canvasses but him.
“Well, she doesn’t have my permission, any more than you and Starsky did. How late is the gallery open?”
“Until five-thirty.”
“Good. I’ll be on my way then.”
“Ken, wait.” She caught his arm before he opened the door. “I really wish you wouldn’t be so hard on Dave about this. It isn’t his fault. He was hesitant from the start, but I felt so strongly that this would be something wonderful for you that I put heavy pressure on him to go along with it.”
“Starsky’s a big boy. If he’d wanted to do the right thing, he’d have done it.” Hutch was about to leave when a thought occurred to him. A snippet of his tirade at Starsky that had nagged at the back of his mind. Starsky had seemed surprised that Cecile had only seen “a few” of the canvasses. “Exactly what did you tell Starsky about my showing you the paintings?”
“I just said that you’d shown them to me.”
“All of them?”
“I didn’t clarify how many. I just said I had seen them.”
“So he had this mental picture of you browsing through the canvasses?”
“I don’t know. I guess he probably did.” She appeared puzzled at what significance this point had.
“You didn’t tell him that I only showed you a few that I picked out—you implied that you’d seen them all?”
“I don’t know. God, you’re cross-questioning me like one of your suspects!” she snapped.
“It makes a difference,” he replied firmly.
“I suppose he might have thought I meant I had seen them all. I knew you had more—”
“So you tricked him into believing you’d seen all of them.”
“I didn’t trick him into anything. I said I thought your work was promising, which it is, that I had seen your paintings—which I did—and that I’d like to see you get a start as an artist. I truly feel you have potential, and so does Lucy. I also told him it would be a wonderful second career for you if things fell apart with your current job.”
“Great.” Hutch paced a little.
“That still doesn’t change the fact the paintings were shown without your permission.”
“No, but it changes what Starsky’s frame of reference was in making that decision, even if he was wrong to do it without my permission. He wouldn’t have thought those paintings were nearly as personal to me as they are if he thought I was letting my casual friends browse through them.”
“Casual friends? Is that what we are?” She smiled and shook her head. “You sure know how to put someone in their place, Ken.”
“Tell me about it.” He didn’t say anything more, but left the office hurriedly. Forgetting about picking up the canvasses, he headed for home.
* * * *
Edith Dobey washed the last of the dinner dishes, which were being grudgingly dried by her husband. She had released the children from their clean-up duties to start the cut-throat round of Monopoly that was taking place on the living room floor. Starsky had offered to help clean up, but since he had already been drafted for game duty before he ever arrived, Edith sent him off to entertain the kids while she and her grumbling husband cleaned up after dinner.
“What’s really going on with those two?” Edith asked as she rinsed the last of the dinner plates. She kept her tone quiet, though the laughter and raucous joking about rents due and going to jail were loud enough that it was doubtful she’d have been overheard anyway.
“Starsky isn’t elaborating. Some argument they had yesterday. Hutchinson called in sick, but of course now I know he was just brooding. And shirking his responsibilities over it.”
“Oh, Harold, really. Those two are your best team. It must be serious if it’s causing this much trouble between them. Dave seems devastated. I know he didn’t say much about it, and he’s always great with the kids, but he seems so…I don’t know, not like himself.” She drained the dishwater out of the sink and dried her hands. “Will you please try to talk to Ken?”
“I’m not in the habit of playing mediator in their fights.”
“But you can see how badly he feels—can’t you do something?”
“Oh, brother,” Dobey rolled his eyes as he put the last of the coffee cups back in the cupboard.
“Well?”
“Edith, all this amounts to is Hutchinson giving Starsky a good scare by threatening him with requesting a transfer. It wouldn’t be the first time he pulled something on Starsky to teach him a lesson. The last time earned them a week of directing traffic.” Dobey chortled a little as he remembered inflicting that little penalty on both of them for Hutch’s amnesia stunt. Starsky should have felt fortunate that’s all he got for his reckless driving, and Hutchinson should have learned his lesson about playing elaborate mind games on his partner. “Maybe a stint in the property room cataloging paper clips would impress upon Hutchinson that my department isn’t a forum for his games.”
“I’m more concerned about him,” she said softly, inclining her head toward the group in the living room.
“If this doesn’t straighten itself out tomorrow, I’ll straighten it out personally.”
“I didn’t mean I thought you should sentence them both to cleaning the toilets for six months. I thought maybe you could act as their friend, try to—”
“Look, you know I care very much about those two fruitcakes, and I’ll do what I can to help, if in fact there is anything I can do. But the fact remains that I’m still their superior officer, and they still need to work out their little squabbles on their own time. And you can relax. I’m not going to punish Starsky for this one. Hutchinson is obviously taking care of that. But I don’t like phony sick leave excuses to cover for the inability to rise above an argument and work professionally with your partner. That’s not like Hutch and I’m not going to tolerate it!” His voice had risen more than he himself realized, and he self-consciously peered around the kitchen doorway to see if the living room Monopoly team had heard the little outburst. He could tell by the glance from Starsky out of the corner of his eye that they had, but nothing was said.
“I’m going to go in and attempt to make this a pleasant evening. Do you think you could hang your captain’s hat by the door and have a little fun?”
“Think maybe we could have a little more of that pie while we’re watching our children put Starsky in the poor house
“I think that could be arranged,” she replied, smiling as she linked her arm through her husband’s and they returned to the living room.
* * * *
Hutch pulled into the driveway, half expecting to see Starsky’s car by the garage. Then he remembered that the Torino was due to go in for service that day. Either Starsky wasn’t home or Merle didn’t find a loaner that suited him.
“Starsky?” Hutch called up the back stairs as he entered the kitchen, shaking off the wetness from the rain that was pouring down in sheets outside. There was no response. “Starsk?” He yelled one more time, thinking maybe he had been drowned out by the boom of thunder that had just passed. Starsky obviously wasn’t there.
Resigned to being soaked to the skin, Hutch went back out and retrieved his suitcase from the back seat of the Mercury and hurried back inside. He was inwardly grateful he hadn’t stopped to pick up the paintings now, because transporting them into the house would have been next to impossible in the downpour.
He started a pot of coffee, chilled through by the storm. It struck him that there were no dirty dishes in the sink, and no sign of food or coffee preparation left over from the morning. Nice job, Hutchinson. You didn’t let him explain, you said worse things than you’ve ever said to him in an argument before…and obviously rattled him enough that he wasn’t even interested in eating or his morning coffee. For Starsky, that’s serious.
He took a cup out of one of the refinished cupboards, and his hand lingered on the smooth surface of the wood a moment. The kitchen looked startlingly authentic now. Everything in this stupid house means so much to him…and you pulled that out from under him too. Told him moving in here with him was a mistake…told him to sell it and give you your half…
Pouring a cup of the fresh coffee, he took a couple of swallows and carried the suitcase up the back stairs. He paused at the doorway to Starsky’s room.
The bed was rumpled on top but not slept in, and yesterday’s clothes were in a heap on the easy chair. Hutch picked up the grey sport coat, one of Starsky’s best, and shook out the wrinkles. One thing his partner was particular about, next to his car, were his good clothes. He located a hanger and rescued the mangled heap of dress clothes, hanging them in the closet. It was probably a pointless activity considering the overall scope of the argument, but it seemed like a peace offering. Something reflected the yellow light of the ceiling fixture, almost glowing from the wall.
The plaque. Starsky had not only hung it where he said he would, but he had polished it until it almost glowed. Hutch couldn’t remember it being that shiny on his own wall as a kid.
He was about to leave the room when he noticed the photos on the large antique dresser that had been left with the house. There was one of Terry, one of Starsky’s parents that must have dated back to shortly before his father was killed, and one of the two of them together, both in leather jackets, with expressions that didn’t quite equate to smiles. The memory of that picture being snapped tore at Hutch’s heart, and he didn’t understand why Starsky even displayed it.
Slowly being consumed by Bellamy’s poison, Starsky had stopped a crime lab guy on his way back into the precinct. The man was still carrying his camera equipment from the last crime scene. Starsky had talked him into taking a picture of him and his partner together, right there on the sidewalk. Not wanting to upset his ailing partner, Hutch had gone along with it, none too happily. Why in God’s name would he want a picture to commemorate the day his best friend died?
Starsky had asked if there was black and white film in the camera, and once the man nodded, he had urged Hutch to smile, and he tried one himself, though it didn’t quite come across. The black and white photo didn’t highlight the grey-white pallor of Starsky’s skin, and then Hutch understood the significance of the kind of film. After the other man had left, totally puzzled but promising to bring Hutch a print of the photo when it was developed, Starsky explained that they hadn’t had a recent photo taken together, and this would be something for Hutch to remember him by—like freezing a moment in the day.
Even now, Hutch felt a lump rising in his throat. But he smiled as he remembered showing the print to Starsky in the hospital a couple of days later, when he was well enough to sit up and rejoin the living. They had chuckled a little together about beating the odds one more time, but Starsky had latched onto that photo like it was the hope diamond. It remained in a frame somewhere in his living space from then on.
Under the photo was an envelope, and Hutch recognized his own handwriting—simply the word “Starsk.” It was a greeting card, and as he slipped it out and opened it, he recognized it as the card he had bought for Starsky shortly after he woke up following the shooting by Gunther’s people. It was a contemporary card, mainly purchased to brighten up the sterile room. There was some inane joke in it about chasing nurses. The ICU room was so bland and colorless the first day or so he was conscious that Hutch had made an effort to perk it up a bit. Starsky’s friends began sending cards and well-wishes after he came around, but it was a little chilling how most of them had given him up for dead during the time he was comatose.
He laughed a little at himself when he saw the hen-scratching that covered three panels of the card. Originally intended as only visual stimuli, Hutch had ended up pouring out a long message, reflecting on his feelings about Starsky’s miraculous recovery.
I know everything hurts like hell and being awake probably is a lot more unpleasant that being out of it, but if it’s any consolation, every time I walk in that room and you open your eyes or manage one of your sappy grins for me, it’s sort of like finding out the best present under the tree on Christmas has my name on it.
I don’t say it often enough, and that probably won’t change much, even if I mean for it to. I love you, Starsk. Thanks for beating the odds for me.
Love, Hutch
After all this time, Starsky still kept it on his dresser, tucked discreetly out of sight but in easy reach for him. Nestled safely under a photo that commemorated another close call they’d made it through—barely—together. Hutch sniffed a couple of times, not wanting to give an old greeting card the power to reduce him to tears over two years after writing it. He put it back in its envelope and replaced it under the photo. He wondered if in his parents’ entire home, there were this many mementos of him, let alone concentrated in one room.
So does that make it right for him to show those paintings without your permission? the last of the anger inside him asked. No, it probably doesn’t, but like any common criminal, he ought to get a break for mitigating circumstances. Cecile was misleading about how many she’d been shown, and Starsky’s intentions, as usual, were only the best. That doesn’t make him right, but it makes him forgivable.
After unpacking, showering and donning a warm robe, Hutch settled in one of the library’s big wingback chairs with a book. The storm still raged outside, and there was still no sign of Starsky. It was getting close to midnight, but if Starsky had found something interesting to do with his evening, that wasn’t surprising. Given his frame of mind, though, and the fact Huggy hadn’t seen him at all, Hutch was a little unnerved. He picked up the phone and tried Huggy again, getting the same response—Starsky had not been in, and if he had, Huggy would have passed the message on that Hutch was looking for him.
* * * *
The Monopoly tournament at the Dobey residence ended in Cal emerging victorious, Rosie in second place, and as usual, Starsky brought up the rear. Rosie had lost her potential lead because she never had the heart to collect from Starsky, and kept paying Cal off to keep him in the game. Actually, he was more distracted than usual, so he racked up a legendary loss. Most of the time, while he tended to back himself into financial corners in the game, he didn’t do it so soon or so completely.
Near 10:00, with the younger Dobeys dispersed to their rooms and the driving rain, thunder and lightning only getting worse, Starsky took his leave. It occurred to Edith that the old Starsky, who hated getting wet for any reason, usually would have pulled his jacket over his head and made a run for his car. This man walked slowly through the downpour, shoulders slumped, mindless of the weather. He got into the small blue loaner car and pulled out of the driveway onto the street.
The little car held its own fairly well on the road, though it was definitely rocked more by the wind that the Torino would have been. The rain was really coming down, and visibility was poor. Adding to Starsky’s difficulties were the headlights of a large, four-wheel-drive vehicle behind him. For some unfathomable reason, the driver suddenly turned on the bright lights, making it impossible to see in the glare…
* * * *
The phone startled Hutch out of his doze. The clock on the wall read almost three a.m.
“Hello.”
“Well, well, well,” a male voice began. “You are there.”
“Who is this?”
“This is Curtis, a.k.a., Evan Jordan. I believe you’ve been looking for me—somewhat unsuccessfully, I might add.”
“So why are you calling me now?”
“I have someone here you’re probably looking for. I thought this was going to be a neat, easy operation, but now that I find he’s lying to me, I might have to teach him a lesson about that.”
“What are you talking about?” Hutch tried to sound annoyed, but he knew the other man had Starsky, and he didn’t want to think what he had planned for him.
“Your partner. He told me not to bother calling the house, that you weren’t home. Now I told him as long as he was straight with me, he wouldn’t have to get hurt.”
“He’s being straight with you. I wasn’t supposed to be here,” Hutch responded, sounding calmer than he felt. “I left yesterday and was planning to get away for a few days, but something came up and I came home sooner than expected.”
“Nice save, Hutchinson.”
“Look, I don’t have any proof that you have him. Let me talk to him.”
“Sure. Hold on.” The man’s tone was almost conversational.
“Hutch?” Starsky’s voice sounded strained, but strong.
“You okay, buddy?”
“For the moment. I’m sorry about…everything.”
“Don’t worry about—”
“This is really touching, but we’ve got business to transact,” the caller cut in again.
“What is this? A ransom demand? If it is—”
“He already told me you didn’t work together anymore and that I wouldn’t get much for him on a trade. You two have this whole little routine worked out, don’t you?” He snickered a little and resumed his monologue before Hutch could respond. “I don’t want your money. I have enough of that. By now you’ve figured out I’m Ben Forest’s son, and my grandmother’s loaded, so between those sources of income, I don’t need to go into the kidnaping business. I just want to meet with you.”
“When and where?”
“Well, how about as soon as possible, at the farm? You know where that is. You were here a week or so ago, I think.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Oh—and on this one, you better really come alone. I know this sounds like a tired line from an old movie, but if I so much as suspect another cop, or any sort of back up, is involved in this, I will kill Starsky. He really doesn’t serve any other purpose than as a negotiating tool. Once that function is over, I can either let him go or kill him.”
“Killing a cop isn’t too smart—”
“What’re you gonna do, add on to my jail time? Hell, I’ve killed three women already. I don’t envision the DA doing a whole lot of plea-bargaining on that one. So you see, I really mean it when I say it doesn’t matter to me. He stays alive as long as you cooperate.”
“I’m on my way. But let me tell you this, Jordan—if he’s not in perfect condition when I get there—”
“You’ll do what? Look, you and I both know that his life is in my hands right now. I could put a bullet through his head as soon as I hang up, and you’d still show. And there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do about it. Just get here.” The line went dead. The chilling reality of the statement froze his soul. Jordan was right—Starsky’s fate was in his hands, and there wasn’t a damn thing Hutch could do to change that.
He hastily dressed and rushed out to the car. The drive to the farm would be a long, tedious and hazardous one given the storm, but he kept the Mercury moving a little faster than he should down the country roads that would take him to the isolated property. He’s probably going to kill you both. He may have already killed Starsky. But I don’t think he has…I would know. If Starsky were really dead now, I would know. He has to be alive. I have to talk to him…
The dilapidated old farmhouse was only kept company on the flat, unremarkable terrain by an equally rickety old barn and chicken coop. Like the house, they had been without occupants for many years. Hutch had left word with Huggy that if he didn’t hear back from one or both of them by 8 a.m., he should call Dobey. Jordan was very wise in knowing that only to save Starsky’s life would Hutch go out on such a Kamikaze mission without back up in place. But there was no way Hutch was about to risk it if he could handle the situation somehow and get them both out alive.
The aging Mercury rattled its protest as it followed the unpaved, washboard road to the pot hole-scarred drive that would take it back to the house itself. There was a single light burning in what was probably the living room of the house. Hutch hoped this front porch was sturdier than their own had been prior to its repair. The entire house didn’t look as if it had much life left in it.
He pulled up in front of the old place, and drawing his gun, stealthily approached the front steps. A bright light suddenly flooded the front porch. A young man stood in the doorway.
“Y’all come on in, now,” he invited with a little laugh. “You can just leave the gun right there on the porch railing.” The silhouette of the shotgun he was holding became clear as he pushed open the screen door with his free hand.
“Where’s Starsky?” Hutch demanded before relieving himself of his weapon.
“Oh, he’s around. I didn’t plug him in the head after all. I figured you’d be less likely to stick around, and I have a few things I want to talk over with you. Now get a move on.”
“I want to know he’s all right,” Hutch stated as he complied with the order to set the gun on the railing and pass through the door into the living room. It was a stuffy little space filled with threadbare furniture and various pieces of debris built up over the years of disuse.
“This isn’t about Starsky. Believe it or not, I really don’t care how things turn out for him. He’s all right.” He gestured toward a ratty-looking brown chair. “Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about.”
“You kidnaped my partner just so we could sit here and talk?” Hutch demanded angrily.
“Got you out here, didn’t it?” Evan Jordan sat in a similar chair on the other side of a well-worn coffee table. “I’m pretty good with this shotgun, so don’t get any ideas. Besides, now’s a good time to explain to you where Starsky is.” He used the shotgun to point up at the ceiling. “I’ve got him tied to the bed in the room right above us. You know, a neighbor of mine killed his father when his shotgun went off accidentally while he was cleaning it and shot through the ceiling into the bedroom above, where the old man was in bed. Well, they say it was accidental. Who knows?”
He smiled congenially. “That’s where I got the idea for this set up, anyway. I figure with your gun outside, and your hands in plain sight—please keep them on the arms of the chair—I could kill Starsky before you’d ever have a chance to complete a good move against me.”
“You killed those women. Why?”
“Why your woman, isn’t that the big question? I feel pretty puffed up right now. That’s probably the question you ask God all the time. Why my woman? Now you’re asking me. Well, now is when you get the answer to the puzzle, because you failed miserably. I’m really kind of disappointed. I thought you’d have this all figured out by now. Maybe your girlfriend getting killed fried your brains, and you weren’t a good adversary after that.” He shrugged.
“You want to play guessing games, is that it? See how long it takes me to figure out the point of all this?”
“I tried that already. I can see how long it’s taken you, and you still don’t know. I don’t know if I should be proud of myself or disappointed in you. In any event, all of this was because of you. Impressed? Flattered? Make you feel special?” Jordan ran a hand through his wavy brown hair. Dressed in a UCLA sweatshirt, jeans and sneakers, he looked like any other innocent college student.
“Exactly what are you saying?” Brows knit together, Hutch didn’t want to accept that something as hideous as a string of brutal slayings could be somehow attributable to him, even if he had done nothing wrong. Living with those deaths on one’s conscience would be enough to drive anyone mad…
“Madeleine Nolan was the hardest, since she was the first, and I really didn’t have anything against her. But it got easier. By the time I did that hot little blonde of yours, I had a great time.”
“You perverted son of a—” Hutch lurched forward in his chair but froze as the shotgun aimed toward the ceiling.
“Ah, ah, ah.” Jordan smiled as the detective sat back down slowly. “I didn’t know she was pregnant. Man, that was like a two-for-one deal. Wife-to-be and kid in one swoop. She begged me for her child’s life, did you know that?” He watched Hutch’s knuckles go white as he gripped the arms of the chair in which he sat. “But through all of it, I made one observation about women that amused me a little. The thing they resisted the most was changing into their wedding dresses. I don’t know if they thought I was going to rape them or something because they undressed, or what it was. I thought it was kind of funny, really. I mean, if I was gonna rape somebody, I wouldn’t have them change their clothes. Just take ’em off.”
“Is there a point to this?” Hutch asked through clenched teeth in a barely controlled voice.
“Honestly I was beginning to wonder that myself. I mean, I finally have to hand you the answer. Some hot shot detective.” Jordan laughed a little. “You know what I almost did? Kill Starsky. Now I’m beginning to think I shoulda gone with my first impression, but when I heard about the girlfriend, I couldn’t help it.”
“Let me get this straight. You killed those women, including my fiancee, to get at me somehow?” Hutch watched as Jordan smiled condescendingly.
“I’ll take it from the top, just so you get the whole picture. I’ve been planning this for so long, and waiting so long for you and your dense friends to figure it out that I’m just running off at the mouth.”
“This obviously is some leftover plot of your father’s.”
“No, it was all mine.” He paused. “I loved my father. To you he was just another criminal you busted and brought down. I watched him wither up and die in prison. He was good to me, a good father. You took that away from me—”
“He messed with me, Jordan. I didn’t go looking for him.”
“You were trying to come between him and Jeannie.”
“I find it a little ironic—you sticking up for him and another of his lovers. Your mother was one of them once.”
“Leave my mother out of this. Furthermore, he offered to leave his wife and marry her before I was ever born, but she didn’t want me growing up in what she called a ‘crime family.’ Now don’t interrupt me again. As I was saying, he meant a lot to me. He had one dying wish, and that was to bring you and your partner down. He was most interested in you, though. So after he died—that was three years ago—I went on with my life and tried to forget the whole thing for awhile. But it kept nagging at me, so I thought the first thing I should do was find a way to get closer to you and your partner, learn something about you—your schedules, how you worked. One thing I’ve learned is that people love to talk about themselves, especially if they think they’re about to be recognized for something.” He shifted into a more comfortable position in his chair.
“So you’ve been stalking us for years?”
“You could call it that, I guess. I call it research. You might remember—or maybe you don’t, but your partner would—that about two years ago, a student doing his internship with the local Chamber of Commerce came to the precinct to interview potential candidates for an award sponsored by a local citizens’ group. I called it the ‘Citizens’ Law Enforcement Appreciation Award.’ One cop was going to be singled out, given a cash award and honored at a dinner for his exemplary service. This was going to be an annual event, a way for the community to say ‘thank you’ to the men and women in blue.
I thought it sounded pretty hokey, but the first person I tried it out on bought it hook, line, and sinker. I did use a disguise, incidentally. This one was a blond wig and phony mustache—well, kind of an ironic tribute to the man I wanted to kill,” he concluded with a chuckle. “I talked to a couple of patrol officers first, to get into my character, then I looked Starsky up. He was chained to a desk in the traffic division, recovering from major surgery—which I figured was connected to the shooting in the police garage that had been all over the papers. He was kind of a ragged-looking character at the time—real thin, pale, moved like an old man around that little office they’d stuck him in.”
“What’s your point?” Hutch remembered only too well how frail Starsky had been even when permitted to go back on desk duty. It had taken him better than a year to look healthy again, and in Hutch’s opinion, he only recently had begun to look like his old self.
“I expected him to go off about his shooting, try the sympathy ploy to get the award. All he talked about was his partner. Like you were some kind of superman. You single-handedly brought down Gunther’s empire, you managed his recovery from the shooting, and you managed to maintain a pretty significant caseload while you did all this. I can’t remember now if he implied that you walked on water, too.”
He shook his head and smiled a bit sarcastically. “So I got this brainstorm. If you were even half as impressed with your partner as he seemed to be with you, the best revenge on you would be to kill him. Especially after you thought you’d just gotten him back from the jaws of death and then—WHAM! He’s dead.”
“So what stopped you?” Hutch felt his stomach twist into a knot, but he resolved to stay calm, hoping to keep the other man talking, his shotgun aimed away from the ceiling. Maybe he could think of something if he just had more time…
“One thing at a time. I really put a lot of research and planning into killing Starsky. I watched all sorts of revolting movies, read true crime stories about gruesome torture-murders. I wanted to make it…unforgettable. I actually had a list of things I was going to do to him. I was going to hire some guys to help me snatch him, bring him out here, tie him to the bed upstairs just like he is now, and work my way down my checklist until I had either done all of it or he had died from shock or blood loss. Since he wasn’t real strong to begin with, I figured he wouldn’t last long. That’s one of the reasons I took my time researching it. It gave him time to fully recover, and you time to get complacent about having him around again.”
“But you didn’t go after Starsky. At least not in the beginning.”
“I was all set to. I was going to take pictures, or better yet, get a camera mounted and film it for you. Then, I figured I’d put a bullet in his head if he’d lived through all of it, and then send you the tape with a note where you could find his body. In retrospect, I feel like I should have gone with my first impression, because I think it would have been the best revenge after all, and a lot more direct. This way took more time, but then the game…the puzzle I was creating for you was getting more convoluted, and quite frankly, it was fun.
“Anyway, doing the research, getting the supplies—you wouldn’t believe how much trouble it is to pick up stuff like a cattle prod, barbed wire, certain controlled substances, surgical instruments—and not attract someone’s attention. I wasn’t ready to launch the plan to kill Starsky until last January. I was all set to grab him at the next good opportunity when I saw the engagement announcement in the newspaper. Kenneth Hutchinson and Sandra Jerome, to be married April something-or-other. Suddenly, I pictured killing Starsky and you having the wife to fall back on. Didn’t have the same impact.”
“And you just changed your mind and decided to kill Sandra?” Hutch asked, trying to maintain his composure. He was hating himself for actually feeling some relief that the engagement announcement had come about when it did. The tortures that Jordan was alluding to were too horrible to envision, and the ultimate end of finding what was left of Starsky, with a bullet in his head, was unthinkable. That he had been the cause of suffering for Sandra, Madeleine Nolan, Coral Rutherford…and ultimately even Starsky…sickened Hutch more than he could express.
“I just put everything on hold for awhile. I had to think it through carefully. But then I saw this tacky horror movie about a maniac who murders young women on the eve of their wedding. I had the inspiration that topped all inspirations. I would create a serial killer…a monster who preyed on brides…and your lady would be just one of them. I also thought it would be a nice feeling for you to know that three innocent young women were slaughtered just because of you. Maybe then you could see that nailing my father was ultimately more detrimental than if you’d let him go.
“See, if you hadn’t brought him down, I’d have never killed those women—including your fiancee. Also, there was the flipside that I could probably get away clean. You’d be looking for a maniac, a psycho. Not someone with a grudge against you. Boy did you cops take that bait and run with it.” Jordan sighed.
“My grandmother’s roses were the only real mistake I made. You know, I never thought you guys would trace something like that.”
“Why did you go after Starsky? You’d put him aside as a target.”
“I did. But when I went into your house to plant that mannequin—I bought her at a department store that was going out of business. You know how they sell off their fixtures and furnishings at the very end? I figured you wouldn’t be able to trace it because the store wouldn’t be there anymore. And so it wasn’t.
I was getting that all set up when I noticed that flag in window of the house behind you. Man, that idea just hit me like a ton of bricks. I also was ready to give you another hint as to why all this was happening. So I used the name ‘Curtis’—my mother’s last name—see, she got married a few years ago to some rich turkey in Palm Springs. But that’s another whole story.” Jordan adjusted the position of the shotgun aimed toward Hutch so he could cross his legs. The conversational tone and casual demeanor of this murderer surprised Hutch. There was no raving, no brandishing the weapon…just this bizarre enjoyment of telling him the details.
“You hired the guys in the bar?”
“Well, it wasn’t that simple. You don’t just walk into a bar and ask if there are any Nazis there. I went to the presentation given by a Mr. Eisenman at Radnor College. I figured extremist nuts might show up there. I wasn’t disappointed. That’s how I spotted Norton and Mercer. Those two were actually funny when you put them together. There was Norton, all preppy and proper and spouting off Nazi dogma. Then there was Norton, a thug who didn’t mind getting his hands dirty to do a job.
“And also didn’t mind admitting that he liked the sordid side of his politics—the violence, the beatings, the persecution. Norton was a good organizer, but Mercer was a dream come true as a hired thug. He loved his work.” He paused to listen to a noise from above him. “Natives are getting restless up there.” He stood up and backed toward the stairs. “Keep the noise down or I’ll blow your ass off!!” he yelled up the staircase. There was an answering sound of movement of some kind, probably Starsky thrashing around in his restraints. “Fine! Make another sound and I’ll blow your partner’s head off instead!” Silence reigned. Jordan smiled.
“You could let him go. It’s me you’re after. And I’m here.”
“I could, but that would be boring. Besides, it’s infinitely easier to keep you from trying anything when I’ve got your precious partner—and all my old torture supplies—right upstairs.”
“What have you done to him?” Hutch demanded, suddenly wondering if Jordan had tried out any of his devices while he was waiting.
“Not very much. I haven’t tortured him, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He settled back in his chair. “He got a little banged up when that car went into the ditch. Nothing serious. He’ll live. I thought about using the barbed wire to tie him up, but I didn’t. I figured I could save that for him if he made too much noise up there. Besides, I found it harder to work with than it was worth.” Jordan settled back in his chair again. There was no sound from above.
“You went after Starsky just for the fun of it then?”
“It was fun watching Mercer and his pals wipe that cocky smirk off Starsky’s face—and I knew how it would get to you. And also it would send you and all your friends off in another direction, hunting down neo-Nazis and not devoting much energy to the murder case. See, all of that crap with the wedding dress and the roses—that was all show. I didn’t have anything against Madeleine Nolan or that other girl…oh, yeah—Coral Rutherford. I actually didn’t have anything against Sandra Jerome except for her lousy taste in men.
“Anyhow, you weren’t really investigating it as a personal crime, and I wanted to make it personal. So I went after Starsky. When Mercer threw in the rape idea, I thought it was perfect. I mean, that wouldn’t be something I’d want to do myself, because if I were gonna rape anybody, it would have been one of those sexy little blondes I killed.” Hutch began to rise from his chair, and Jordan only registered a bored dismay at the gesture. “Oh, sit down and quit jumping to her defense,” Jordan scolded, taking more active aim at Hutch with the shotgun. “I thought about that, you know. Having a little fun with my work. But that would have changed the profile of the maniac I wanted you to look for, and it would have left physical evidence. I still was entertaining the idea of getting away with it back then, so I didn’t want to leave anything traceable.”
“Why didn’t you let Mercer go through with the assault on Starsky?”
“Because Norton made a very valid point about the time. I was pretty upset about that because I figured we’d be leaving you with a sniveling basket case if Mercer had his way with him. Plus, I was kind of enjoying seeing that self-satisfied pain in the ass you live with put in his place. The only restrictions on him were not to kill Starsky. I wanted him alive, twisted up inside and dysfunctional. But we had been there too long, and it was a good bet that we’d be seeing you show up home, and that would have blown everything. It was kind of funny watching the look on Starsky’s face while Mercer was bickering with me that it wouldn’t take him long if he didn’t do all the extras. Didn’t have any snappy comebacks then.”
“You sick bastard,” Hutch muttered. So all of Starsky’s suffering was because of him after all. Oh, God, how is he gonna feel about that one?
“At least you’re not jumping out of your chair at me. That’s an improvement. Anyway, I told him to forget it and we got out of there, apparently just in time.” Jordan sighed. “The problems started cropping up then. Your nutty neighbor managed to get himself arrested that night, so that shot part of the plan straight to hell. You stopped concentrating on him.”
“Did you send the picture to Starsky?”
“Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, I did.” He was surprisingly willing to tell his tale in its entirety, further convincing Hutch that he must plan to kill them both. “So I was counting on Schoemacher to take the heat, and that fell apart. Then you started sniffing around my grandmother’s place about the roses.
“Shit, man, when those cops showed up at my door to question me about the murders—based on the roses I’d taken out of her garden—I freaked out. You guys were getting too close too fast. Of course then you took off again in another direction and didn’t accomplish anything anyway. Of course, having Mercer and his pals play kick the can with your partner kept you busy for quite a long time.”
“You’re sick.”
“Yeah, probably. But I’m smart enough to keep the BCPD chasing its tail for seven months. Oh, yeah, your kid would’ve been born in November, wouldn’t she? I read the papers. Don’t look so shocked that I know that. I got deprived a father, you got deprived a kid. Maybe there’s a certain justice in that I didn’t even count on.”
“You murdered Coral Rutherford as what—an afterthought—just another death for the sake of appearances?” Hutch ignored the reference to Elizabeth. He had to.
“Yeah, and I was getting sloppy by then. I suppose you don’t think I know that I dropped that receipt there. I knew. About two hours after I got home, I was looking through my pockets before getting rid of my clothes—Coral was a spunky one. There was blood all over me that time.”
“How did you get in and out unnoticed?”
“Look at me. If you saw me—well, minus the shotgun, obviously—in your neighborhood, would you worry—or even notice? Just another college student. I told Madeleine I was a new tenant in her building, and that my phone wasn’t hooked up yet. When she let me in to make the call, whammo. I conked her on the head and the rest is history. Of course, I soon figured out that making them change into the dress was a hell of a lot easier than doing it after they were unconscious. I murdered her before she woke up. If that makes her family feel any better, I doubt as she consciously knew what was happening. Now Sandra…she knew. I wanted her to know. Because when this moment came, I wanted you to know that she suffered.” Jordan watched Hutch a moment. “What, no outburst?”
“Would there be a point, other than to put on a show for you?” Hutch asked, forcing a calmness into his voice he didn’t feel. He’d heard another noise upstairs, but Jordan was too engrossed in his story to notice sounds masked by the thunder.
“Probably not. Anyhow, I told your fiancée that I was a photographer you hired for the wedding. I thought you’d get a kick out of my using your name to gain entry to the house.”
“Why did you spin off into the whole heroin thing? I mean, you already killed Sandra, attacked Starsky—why not just come after me?” Hutch couldn’t handle keeping his cool to discuss Sandra’s death anymore, and he prayed Jordan and his ego would follow the change of subject. He did.
“For the same reason you don’t chug-a-lug expensive champagne. Some experiences should be savored. Getting revenge on you was one of those. I figured knowing someone knew your dirty little secret would drive you bananas. And my dad told me where to find the photo. It was in a safe deposit box at the bank. Under another name, obviously, but he had the key. Thus the games began.
“I was trying to figure out the right time to get together with you, and then you took off with your suitcase yesterday, and I seized the moment. Carpe diem—or something like that. I know you finally made the Ben Forest connection. Duh. What was you first clue?” he asked sarcastically, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. “But then you probably didn’t think that Evan Jordan the homicidal maniac was the one sending you photos of your drug ordeal. And of course, you wouldn’t imagine that he was also a neo-Nazi in his spare time. That was the glory of all this. Watching you all shoot out in the wrong directions…and all the while bringing you down.”
“So how does the story end, Jordan? You’ve gloated about your brilliant schemes and your elaborate plans and your twisted puzzles. Where does it all lead?”
“Right here. This is it. In case you weren’t paying attention, this is the big moment. Killing you straight out was too easy. I wanted you to live with the knowledge that three women died because of what you did to my father. Your partner was beaten and almost raped because of what you did to my father. Can you live with that for the rest of your life? Your fiancee and child are dead because you brought my father down—you and your partner. But all of this isn’t going to stay between us, Hutchinson. I sent a very detailed letter to a reporter at The Chronicle. It should arrive tomorrow sometime. By then, you’ll have made your final decision, and I’ll probably be dead.”
“How do you figure that?”
“My father had this big idea about gangsters in expensive suits and big hats who could get away with anything, who always won, who had cops in their pockets and ran the city like their own little empire. Well, that’s not realistic. It got him killed and ultimately, this little venture will cost me my life. Either in going to prison or in death. I came to that realization about midway through this whole plan, and it sent me reeling for awhile. I almost backed out, disappeared to Brazil or something equally colorful. But it was too good, and too far along to turn back, so I’ve accepted it. I think I’ve made a pretty strong name for myself now. I won’t be forgotten.”
“What is this decision you think I’m going to make?”
“I don’t think you’re going to make it, I know you will.” He smiled and straightened his posture in the chair. Hutch seemed to stiffen out in response, pushing the damp hair off his forehead, as if noticing for the first time that he was even wet from the rain outside. “It’s a choice. Plain and simple: I’m going to kill one of you tonight. Either you or your partner.”
Hutch caught sight of a shadow on the stairs behind Jordan. He tried not to register that in his expression. The other man appeared not to notice.
“Who will it be, Hutchinson? Do I kill you, or do I point the gun at the ceiling and shoot your partner? Of course, that’s kind of a gamble, because it’s possible he could survive the bullet, since my aim isn’t real sure a floor away from him, and I can’t see where I’m shooting. But I know the bed’s right up there, and I’ll maim him pretty effectively, if not fatally.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“The way you feel about your partner is pretty obvious. So I’m sure you’ll make a decision that will make me happy. I still want you to have to make it. Your life or his.”
The shadow took on the very distinct shape of Starsky, hunched so his head was on a level with the railing of the staircase. He gestured to Hutch to make Jordan turn around, to alert him to his presence. If he said anything, Jordan wouldn’t believe it. He’d think it was a trick. All Hutch could do was register on his face the surprise of seeing someone on the stairs, and hope he had read Starsky’s signals from the shadows accurately.
Jordan saw Hutch’s reaction, and without thinking, spun around toward the stairs, shooting. Wood, plaster, and glass were exploding as the shotgun ripped into the house’s frail wall.
Starsky made a perfectly timed dive and roll out of the path of the bullets, emptying his gun in Jordan’s direction as he lay on his side on the floor, having escaped Jordan’s shots.
Hutch was making a frantic crawl out to the front porch, where he grabbed the Magnum off the railing and in the ensuing silence, slithered to the edge of the door frame, then popped inside in a crouched stance, gun aimed firmly in front of him.
“Hutch?” Starsky was rising from his spot on the floor near the stairs. Hutch straightened and relaxed a little at the sound of Starsky’s voice, and the sigh of Evan Jordan’s bullet-riddled body lyingat his feet.
“He’s dead,” Starsky announced, rising from checking the pulse. With three of Starsky’s five shots in the man’s chest and abdomen, that wasn’t surprising.
“Are you okay?” Hutch asked his partner, who was sporting a scrape on his forehead and bloody wrists from tearing himself free from his restraints.
“Yeah, I’m okay. You okay?” Starsky asked, with a slight grin.
“More than okay.” Hutch let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Starsky, I’m sorry. This isn’t the time or the place, but I have to say it right now. I’m sorry for all the lousy things I said to you.”
“I’m sorry too, buddy. I should’ve never—”
“Oh shut up, will ya?” Hutch grabbed his ragged partner and pulled him into a tight hug. He felt the pressure matched.
“Forgive me?” Starsky asked.
“Already forgotten, buddy.” Hutch squeezed tighter momentarily.
“I thought you were gone for real,” Starsky confessed in a hushed voice.
“Can’t get rid of me that easily,” Hutch quipped back, loosening his hold a little so they could step back from each other.
“Guess we still work together pretty well, huh?”
“Best damn team on the force, pal. How’d you get a hold of your piece again?”
“Jordan left it upstairs. I don’t know if he forgot it or if he thought I wouldn’t get loose so it didn’t matter. At any rate, there it was. So once I got out of the ropes…”
“Come on, let’s go radio for help.”
CHAPTER 14
And now that you’re gone
I can’t cry hard enough
For you to hear me now…
The early hours of dawn had flowed into the beginning of a regular work day, with reams of paperwork and countless technicalities needing attention in the wake of the death of the infamous “Bridegroom.” While the press anxiously gobbled up this news, Hutch’s insides twisted at the thought of what they would have to chew on next. Starsky had continuously told him not to worry, that it didn’t matter…but it mattered to him. The thought of his experience with Forest’s goons being front page news made him cringe.
Starsky had endured the countless jokes about the little blue Chevette that had to be towed in from the spot where it had landed in the ditch with his usual nonchalance. By the end of the day, it was obvious he was becoming less and less tolerant of the little jabs about him not being able to keep that big machine on the road. Hutch’s amused reply was simply that Starsky should consider it the price he paid for his legendary driving reputation.
It was mid-evening by the time they drove in the driveway, home at last. Despite his fatigue, Starsky had a spring in his step at having his partner back again, and apparently not angry at him.
“What’re we gonna eat?” Starsky poked his head in the refrigerator, then in the freezer. What he saw wasn’t promising.
“Let’s just order pizza.”
“Okay.” Starsky dialed the number of their favorite pizza place and ordered. Hutch plodded through the house to the TV room and flopped in his favorite chair. It wasn’t long before he heard familiar footsteps approaching. Starsky occupied his usual spot on the couch.
“Don’t get comfortable. We still have to take in the food.”
“Yeah, I know,” Starsky replied through a yawn. “Hutch?”
“What?”
“Are you still mad about the paintings?”
“We settled that, buddy. It’s over.”
“I know you let me off the hook because you were glad Jordan didn’t finish me off, but now that it’s over, are you still angry? I’d understand if you were. I just want you to know that I know it was the wrong thing to do and I’ll never, ever touch anything that belongs to you without your permission again.”
“Since when?” Hutch replied, a little laugh in his voice. He was used to Starsky getting into his closet, his spare change, his food…and it was a way of life. He did the same to his partner and had no plans to stop anytime soon.
“I mean stuff like that. The important stuff.”
“I know that, Starsk. It was a mistake. I should have let you explain. The paintings were very personal to me—” Hutch paused when he saw the return of the contrite expression to his partner’s face. “I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, buddy. I just want to explain why I said…things I could never really mean. I was shocked, thrown off balance. I didn’t want to ever share those things with anyone else. You lived through half of the experiences with me that made me paint them, so it was natural to show you. But in public?” Hutch paused. “But you meant well, and Cecile didn’t specify that I only showed her a couple of canvasses. It was a mistake. I understand that now. You’d be the last person who’d try to do something to hurt me.”
“When you said you didn’t trust me, didn’t want to work with me…” Starsky closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “It was the hardest thing I ever had to hear.”
“You shouldn’t have had to hear it, either. It was a bunch of shit.” Hutch stretched in the chair. “How’d you end up having dinner at the Dobeys’?”
“Rosie stopped by after school, and I was feeling pretty bad, so I guess she considered it a mission of mercy.” Starsky chuckled. “She’s quite a kid.”
“Cecile said two of them had buyers.”
“Your paintings? That’s great!” Starsky straightened up and then slumped again. “But then you didn’t want to sell them, so I guess that’s not great.”
“Well…it’s kind of nice to have my work validated that way.”
“I always told you you were good.”
“But you’re biased.”
“Well, yeah, but still…I know crap when I see it. Your paintings were…meaningful. But they weren’t so weird that you couldn’t find some meaning of your own in it, even if you didn’t know what the person painting it was thinking.”
“That’s an interesting observation.” Hutch seemed to ponder the point.
“Ya know, not everybody’s gonna know what you were feeling or goin’ through when you did those. They’re gonna make their own interpretations anyway. You can just be a mysterious artist who says you want people to make their own assumptions.”
“Yeah, I suppose. I have to get a hold of Lucy Barrington one of these days and get the canvasses back, and make a decision about selling the two that are spoken for.”
“Are you still mad at Cecile?”
“That one I’m still working on. Don’t push it,” Hutch warned.
“If you could forgive me—”
“Starsky, Cecile and I don’t have a history. And what I can chalk up to good intentions with you, I can’t chalk up to anything but insensitivity and pushiness from her.”
“She really thought she was doin’ you a favor. I was mad too, at first, but I’ve done a lot of thinkin’ about it since it happened, and if anybody’s really the bad guy here, it’s me. I knew better. She didn’t.”
“What is it with you where Cecile is concerned? You’ve been pushing her at me since the first day I laid eyes on her.”
“I don’t mean to push…I guess I just feel like there’s a lot of good chemistry between you guys. I think you enjoy being with her, and she’s crazy about you.”
“Listen, pal, when I need a matchmaker, I’ll call you. In the meantime, let it lie, okay?”
“Okay.” The doorbell rang, and Starsky headed to the front door to take in the pizza.
* * * *
The rainy season was living up to its name. Thunder rumbled and more rain poured down on an already-soggy earth. Hutch noted how his feet seemed to sink into the grassy ground as he made his way across the hills of the cemetery to the Jerome family plot. It was well after midnight, and he employed a flashlight to find his way to Sandra’s resting place. No moon came out that night to light his path.
Starsky would consider this insane. Climbing the fence to visit a grave at midnight—in the pouring rain, no less. Hutch remembered his partner’s almost aversion to Terry’s grave. It was as if seeing her name carved there in granite, knowing her mortal remains were locked in a vault beneath the dirt made what was already crippling grief unbearable. Hutch could count his visits to Sandra’s grave on one hand. It was not uplifting, nor did he feel particularly close to her by staring at a certain patch of sod for an extended period of time. Her spirit had flown, and wherever it was, it wasn’t living in a box in the dirt.
Still, since his confrontation with Jordan, the horrible realization that he had been the reason for The Bridegroom’s reign of terror, Hutch had felt drawn to visit Sandra’s grave. Whether to feel close to her or to punish himself, he wasn’t sure. Choosing to do so at midnight in the pouring rain seemed to indicate the latter.
He finally paused in front of the slightly raised stone. A pattern of flowers surrounding a cross had been carved into the granite, along with the name “Sandra Elizabeth Jerome, Beloved Daughter.”
Would have been wife…already should have read “mother.” It’s funny…I know I should be cold out here in the rain, but my soul has been so cold since you left that I don’t know the difference anymore. You were my whole future, sweetheart. Home, children, grandchildren someday… Now it feels like someone killed something inside of me I can’t revive. I look at someone like Cecile, and while I could care for her, or want her in my life, I can’t feel for her what I felt for you…even if things hadn’t happened with the paintings. It was still forced. Something I did because I thought I should want to. Figured there was something wrong with me if I didn’t want a woman like her. Hell, I don’t want anybody but you, and that hasn’t changed. Maybe it will, maybe not.
What’s killing me is to know that you had to die this way because of me. Dear God, Sandra, I’d cut off my arm before I’d have ever hurt you. It was bad enough to know that someone suffered because of me—it’s happened before. But this…you lost your life, you carried our beautiful little daughter inside you and she died with you…because of me. I know it’s irrational to call it my fault but I feel like it is.
He dropped to his knees in the wet grass and caressed the stone with his fingertips.
I wish I could turn back time. I’d have never introduced myself to you in the grocery store. What a place to meet the woman of your dreams, huh? I went in search of the perfect head of lettuce and found you instead. Hutch found himself smiling at the memory, not noticing that he was soaked to the skin or that the thunder was now being accompanied by lightning on occasion. You were the prettiest girl I had ever seen…I haven’t seen one prettier since. I fell in love with you right then—with your smile, and those eyes, the way you moved—you were perfect. And you were so beautiful and perfect inside.
I’m never going to get over you. I know that now. And I’m never going to forgive myself for introducing myself to you that day…for bringing the horror and danger of my work and my past into your world, where you’d still be living now, safe and secure if I had stayed out of it. It’s bad enough that Starsky had to suffer for me, but he’s in the middle of the danger with me—we’ve both risked everything for each other willingly, and we signed up for that…you didn’t. You coped with being a cop’s girlfriend with all the class and courtesy and patience in the world. You’d have coped with the ups and downs of being a cop’s wife the same way. But you didn’t bargain for this…didn’t plan on paying a price this steep for loving me.
Hutch straightened up, startled by another loud clap of thunder and flash of lighting. Realizing he was standing, soaking wet, in the midst of trees during an electrical storm, he started to move away from the grave. He looked back at it, wanting the cold, horrible reality of it to punish his already-battered soul for causing Sandra’s death. Not that it was only Sandra and Elizabeth. Madeleine Nolan and Coral Rutherford, two innocent young women, were both dead because of him…people had postponed weddings, lived in fear for months… And Starsky is still having the occasional nightmare because of what was done to him because of me. Maybe you’re right, Jordan: maybe I won’t be able to live with this forever.
* * * *
Starsky checked the grandfather clock in the library again. It was after one, and still no sign of Hutch. He had been puzzled to hear the other slide out sometime after 11:30 that night, and now he was getting worried. He kept reminding himself that not only was his partner an adult, but a cop, so it was silly to stand around and agonize over where he was. He could take care of himself. Still…
The side door was unlocked and opened. Starsky hurried down the back stairs, ignoring the deja vu of hearing someone entering the side door when he was expecting Hutch.
“What the—where were you?” Starsky asked his soaked partner as he dripped his way into the kitchen, shivering.
“I went out.”
“I figured as much. You’re soaked—you must be frozen. I’ll get a fire going in the library. Come on.”
“Just leave me be, Starsky.” Hutch pulled his arm away as the other tried to take a hold of it.
“Look, if you don’t wanna talk, that’s okay. I promise I won’t ask any questions. But you’re gonna catch pneumonia if you don’t get out of those wet clothes and get warmed up a little.”
“All right.” Hutch plodded up the stairs with his partner, and followed the instructions to go into his room and shed the soaked clothing. When he returned to the library, the fire was beginning to crackle to life, and a glass of brandy sat on the table near his favorite wing back chair, which had been pulled close to the fireplace. He dropped himself into the chair and pulled the folds of his robe around him. He was more chilled than he’d realized, and was grateful that the rain was pounding on the roof now instead of on his drenched body.
“Warmin’ up a little?” Starsky appeared with a blanket, which he tucked solicitously around Hutch’s lap and legs. He pulled a towel from its refuge under his arm and started toweling off the soaked blond hair that was pasted to Hutch’s head like a clammy cap.
“Starsk, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just don’t want to explain—”
“Apology accepted. And I said you didn’t have to, unless there’s somethin’ you want me to know.” He continued his task with the towel, resigned to tending his friend’s external needs for the moment.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” Hutch said in little more than a whisper.
“What’re you sorry for now, Blintz? You didn’t do anything,” Starsky responded, his tone gentle.
“For what…happened to you. It was my fault.” Hutch felt the motion of the towel stop momentarily, then resume for a few seconds more. When it stopped again, he felt a comb lifting the towseled strands into an approximation of their right place. Starsky still hadn’t said anything. “Jordan was trying to get to me…and he used you to do that. And Sandra…”
“Is that what this is about?” Starsky handed him the brandy he’d igorned, and Hutch took a small sip of it.
“I went to her grave tonight.”
“At midnight? In the rain?” Starsky pulled the matching chair close to Hutch’s, so they were facing each other in front of the fire that was now giving off a pleasant warmth.
“I had to…I don’t know why…but I had to see it. I had to apologize…”
“You had to punish yourself and going out and staring at a grave in the pouring rain and getting pneumonia would be a good start.”
“I feel so damned…responsible.” Hutch’s hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. “If I had just never introduced myself…never met her,” he concluded, shaking his head slightly.
“I know how you feel, babe.” Starsky placed a hand on one of the tight fists.
“I guess you do.”
“Hey, you’ve got one of the victims alive and kicking, right here, to tell you first hand that it wasn’t your fault. Hutch, I don’t ever blame you for what happened to me. Even if it was some sicko’s idea of revenge. It wasn’t your fault. And if Sandy were here, right now, she’d say the same thing. She loved you, Hutch. And she knew you loved her more than your own life. She knew you’d have died to defend her and Elizabeth if you could have, if you’d been there or had the chance. Just like I know you’d have gotten between me and those nuts if you’d walked in on the whole mess while they were still here—whether you were outnumbered or not. What Jordan did to you was the cruelest kind of revenge. But you were one of the victims too, buddy.”
“But three innocent women are dead—”
“Because Jordan was sick, twisted—the son of a bitter old crime lord. This was Jordan’s fault—not yours.” Starsky forced the clenched fist to relax, shaking his head at the nearly bloody indentations the nails had made in the palm of Hutch’s hand. “When I think about what happened to me, I get angry—real angry. But I get angry at Mercer, mostly. And at Jordan for setting it up, and the others for their parts in it. But it never occurred to me to feel angry at you. Not for a minute.” He encouraged the other hand to un-tense, holding both and rubbing over the red crescent indentations in the palms with his thumbs. “Quit punishing yourself, buddy. You don’t deserve to suffer anymore for Ben Forest. Not one minute more.”
“Starsk, you’d forgive me anything…”
“Probably, but I’d still be smart enough to figure out if there was something I needed to forgive you for. To forgive someone, they have to have done something. You didn’t do anything wrong here, babe. All those years ago, you fell for Jeannie and then you felt sorry for her and rescued her—or tried to—from Forest. You didn’t owe that to her. You weren’t married or anything. You could’ve walked away, knowing the risks, and let her fend for herself. You laid your life on the line to help her. And because you were willing to risk your life for someone you loved, you’ve been punished for it ever since. By Forest, by IA, by Jordan…you don’t need forgiveness because you never hurt anyone. People got hurt because of the situation.”
“Because of their connection to me.”
“No!” Starsky released his hands and grabbed his shoulders. “Because of Forest! Because of Jordan—but never…never, ever because of you—got that?”
“Got it,” Hutch replied quietly, not fully convinced but wanting to calm Starsky’s outburst. He looked down at the man who was now on his knees on the floor in front of him, so worried about his state of mind. He forced a little smile. “Anybody ever tell you you should’ve been a shrink?” He ruffled a few dark curls gently. Starsky sat back on his heels and smiled a little.
“Gee, maybe I could be the department’s shrink.”
“The BCPD’ll never be the same.” Hutch laughed a little, stunned that he actually felt some inner peace, and a little amusement, behind the laugh. Starsky might never be a renowned psychiatrist, but he almost always had the perfect cure for what ailed Hutch.
* * * *
Hutch made a quick run to the Barrington Gallery after work the next day, planning to pick up the canvasses and tell Lucy to forget selling the two that were tagged. He was less than pleased to see Cecile’s car parked by the curb. Might be just as well, he thought. Let her be present when I can this whole screwball scheme of hers.
“May I help you?” A short, heavy-set woman with dark hair and glasses, dressed in a business suit, greeted him at the door.
“I’m here to see Lucy Barrington. I’m Ken Hutchinson. She has some canvasses that belong to me.”
“Yes, Mr. Hutchinson. I was at your show on Sunday. I was hoping to meet you. Please follow me.”
“Thank you.” He followed her as directed through the gallery and through a door marked “Private.” They were in a narrow, short hall leading to three doors. The second of the three was open, and he could hear Cecile’s voice.
“Ms. Barrington? Mr. Hutchinson is here about his canvasses.” She motioned to him to enter the small, attractively appointed office.
“Ken,” Cecile greeted, looking surprised to see him.
“Cecile,” he acknowledged curtly. “Ms. Barrington,” he addressed the tall brunette who had risen from behind her desk, “I would like to pick up my canvasses. You should let your buyers know that the artist isn’t interested in selling.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she replied, calmly. “They brought a good price.”
“They shouldn’t have been shown in the first place. I’m not even going to get into what I think of showing an artists’ work without his permission—”
“It was my understanding at the time of the show that we had your permission.”
“Well, you didn’t. Did you see my signature on anything?”
“No, but Cecile advised me that you had agreed to the showing.” Lucy was obviously disenchanted with her friend’s game of skullduggery, and had no plans to suffer the consequences of it alone.
“Well, she misinformed you.”
“Before you decide to take all the canvasses back, please consider the outcome of the show. You had two sales, and considerable interest from other patrons. You also had a good review in Monday’s ‘Arts and Activities’ section of The Chronicle.” She tossed the newspaper, folded open to the appropriate section, on the desk.
“It really was a success, Ken,” Cecile added quietly. He picked up the newspaper, and skimmed the brief summary his show had received in the listing of art shows in the area. It wasn’t glowing, but it was very positive. No one was calling him the next Van Gogh, but the critic seemed to find his work “interesting and thought-provoking, definitely worth the gallery visit.” He glanced up at Cecile, who quickly averted her eyes to the floor. Lucy Barrington was not so easily cowed.
“In my humble opinion, you’re acting like a prima donna,” she spoke up firmly. “You didn’t want your work shown, but it was, and the results were positive. Now you can either pout and stomp off home because someone did something you didn’t like, or you can take advantage of this opportunity which is hard-won for many who aspire to make a living as career artists. Quite frankly, I find your reaction to all this to be immature and absurd.”
“Lucy,” Cecile chided softly.
“You think it’s immature and absurd not to want someone to take it upon herself to ignore your feelings, manipulate one of your friends, and then take something that isn’t hers and display it?”
“No, but I think it’s absurd not to seize an opportunity when it comes your way, even if you didn’t engineer it yourself. Cecile was very wrong in what she did. I don’t need to tell you that she placed me in a very precarious position with this scheme. However, it ended well, and I feel strongly that if you are the intelligent man she seems to feel you are, you’ll reap the benefits that some people work tirelessly for years to achieve. You’ve sold your work. You’ve had a showing. That is success defined for many artists. And you didn’t have to lift a finger to make it happen.”
“Which paintings were sold?” Hutch asked finally.
“The ones marked ‘Angel of Death’ and ‘Hunger.’”
Hutch reeled a bit at her answer. Those were probably the most intensely personal of the lot, the “Angel” inspired by Starsky’s near-death by poisoning and “Hunger” being a surreal, nightmarish, abstract design in a myriad of dark colors arising from his whole ordeal with the heroin. He thought of how both canvasses had haunted him in their way, lurking among the others. The “Angel of Death” had visibly unnerved Starsky when he first saw it. A blurry, black-cloaked grim reaper cradled an abstract human form in its arms, leering an ugly, skull-smile at the viewer. “Hunger” seemed to be a visual interpretation of the mind-boggling horror of the need for the drug, the confusion and the pain…and in some strange way, now he was free of both of them. Someone else had purchased his pain…
“How much did they go for?”
“I had a check drawn up for you. I have the selling prices on deposit, and this is the total, less my commission, of course.” Lucy handed him a long business envelope. “The enclosed letter will explain the exact breakdown of prices.” She waited while Hutch opened it, scanned the contents, and had trouble hiding his favorable surprise at the bottom line.
“All right. Go ahead and sell the paintings.”
“I think you’re making a very wise decision,” Lucy commented, smiling slightly. She was an attractive woman, polished and a possessing a very commanding presence. Hutch thought how unfortunate anyone would be to be on the wrong side of negotiations with her.
“Ken, that’s wonderful!” Cecile spoke up. “Maybe we could set up another—”
“Stop right there, Cecile. I am taking Ms. Barrington’s advice about making the most of an unfortunate situation. However, if I decide to sell any more of my work in the future, I will make my arrangements directly with Ms. Barrington. If that’s agreeable to you.” He turned to face Lucy.
“Most agreeable.” She rose and shook hands with him across the desk. “I would say it has been a pleasure—”
“Well, it’s been an experience,” Hutch responded, smiling.
“That it has. I would be interested in seeing a broader range of your works if you should ever decide you’d like to show something again. Please give me a call,” she concluded, handing him her business card. “My assistant will have brought out your canvasses by now. You can pick them up from her out front.”
“Thank you. And I will consider the idea of another showing. Cecile,” he said, nodding in her direction as he left the office.
After loading the canvasses in his trunk and slamming it, Cecile appeared at his side.
“Ken, I wish we could just sit down and talk this over.”
“Look, just because I could see some value in what your friend had to say in there doesn’t mean that I feel any differently about the way all this came about.” He walked around the side of the car to get in, but Cecile followed.
“I know I was wrong, but—”
“You know what I find the most despicable about this? I don’t like you using Starsky for a pawn in your little scheme.”
“He could have said no,” she retorted.
“You made him think he was doing me this great favor, and if he said no, he’d be standing in my way somehow. How in hell did you expect him to respond?”
“I’m sorry I got Dave involved in this. But I still think it was a wonderful opportunity that turned out well, and I don’t know why you’re obsessed with making everyone involved pay for how it happened.”
“What possessed you?” Hutch finally asked.
“In case you haven’t noticed, you clod, I care about you. You confided to me that you didn’t know what would happen to your job if the whole drug situation became public knowledge. And I could tell you were scared. And you didn’t want to let Starsky down about the house, so you were afraid of what being unemployed would mean. I saw a way to make it better for you. To take away some of the misery you seemed to be in. There’s nothing in this for me.”
She shrugged almost helplessly. “I’m not doing it for some hidden motive of personal gain. I did it because you were stressed out and you were scared and you were still miserable grieving for Sandra and I wanted something really wonderful to happen for you.” She shook her head. “I’m done begging you. I don’t know what secret code Dave knows for earning your forgiveness, but if you two are at least speaking again, I’m glad. I wish that kind of tolerance extended to someone else in your life.” She turned and began walking toward her car. He caught her arm.
“Cecile, I…” Their eyes locked for a moment, and he could see a genuine remorse, pain…and maybe even something that resembled love in the warm brown eyes opposite his. “I still don’t agree with how this all happened. But I…I believe that your intentions were good. And maybe I can’t come down on you for not knowing me well enough to know how I’d react.”
“Dave knew. I just wouldn’t listen. I was so sure this was a good thing to do… Oh, Ken, I never would have done anything to hurt you. I hope you know that. I just…I wanted to make a difference in your life, to help you. Maybe I was guilty of trying to redeem what happened with Jerry by making something special happen for you.”
“Or maybe your were trying to turn me into the new and improved Jerry. The artist?” Hutch let go of her arm. “You were so enthused to find out that I did some painting. I knew you were interested in art, had run with the artsy crowd in college. I thought you’d be interested. But you were beyond interested, and it just dawned on me why. I overcame a brush with heroin, and if you could make me an artist, maybe you’d have another Jerry.”
“That’s not true,” she spat, a little too defensively.
“I’m not condemning you if it were true, Cecile. If I could create another Sandra somehow, I’d do it. But I can’t bring her back anymore than you can bring Jerry back by turning a cop who had a bad experience into the reincarnation of your tortured artist lover. Yes, I’ve done some painting to work through some of the misery in my life. But I haven’t painted anything in a couple of years now, and it’s not exactly in my blood. I’m not going to trade in my Magnum for a paintbrush anytime soon if I can help it.”
“I just feel so responsible for Jerry sometimes,” she said, tears starting to escape from her eyes.
“I know. But you weren’t. We all create our own cesspools. If we drown in them, it isn’t the fault of the people around us. You did all you could for Jerry. If he’d lived, and you hadn’t bickered with him about his drug habit, he wouldn’t have had a positive life. He’d have ended up dead or in jail sooner or later. And you’d have been picking up the pieces, probably not at all successful in your own right, because you’d have been nursing a junkie half the time.
“I was in that world for just a few short days. Cecile, it’s hell. That is what hell is—the nightmares and the pain and the hunger—the high and the crash—Jerry escaped from that hell, not in the ideal way, but he couldn’t accept what you were lovingly trying to make him do in rehab. He would have always been the tortured painter. It makes great legend, but a lousy reality.” He watched as she fought to hold in the tears, and then finally pulled her into an embrace.
“Does this mean you forgive me?” she asked shakily.
“Starsky thinks I ought to, you know.” He heard a muffled chuckle against his jacket. “Not that I’d ever tell him this, but sometimes he’s smarter than I am.” He felt her arms tighten around his waist, and she cried softly against his shoulder. He figured some of it was emotion over Jerry, but some of it seemed to be for him…relief at being back in his good graces again.
“Are you free for dinner?” she ventured, looking up and self-consciously trying to salvage some of her mascara. Hutch kindly provided his handkerchief with a little smile.
“Only if you let me take you out. You cooked last time.” He guided her with an arm around her shoulder toward her car.
“But you never got to eat it.”
“There’ll be other nights for that. Let’s go somewhere special, huh?”
“Really?”
“Really.” He smiled widely. “After all, I’m a successful artist now, remember?” He patted the side of his jacket where the check lurked in his pocket. “Pick you up about seven?”
“I’ll be ready,” she replied, grinning back as she slid into her car.
Hutch finally enjoyed a pleasant evening out with Cecile. Things were a little strained at first, given the whole art gallery debacle, but they quickly rediscovered their rapport.
* * * *
Starsky settled in for a quiet evening of sorting the attic. He’d had the brainstorm that maybe there would be some old Christmas decorations stashed up there somewhere, so he began plumbing the depths of cartons, storage chests and even the old wardrobe in the far corner. To his amusement, he found a variety of old hats, dating back to the 1940’s. There was a well-worn suit or two in there, which he imagined had been stored since it wasn’t quite good enough to wear to the office, but almost too good to throw out.
Unable to resist temptation, he quickly shed his own clothes and ended up playing dress up in the old garments from the wardrobe. The mirror on the door of the old cabinet reflected what he considered a fairly sharp image. Thoughts of a trip to Las Vegas, dressed in similar clothing, came to mind. He laughed at the memory of his and Hutch’s brush with gambling fever, but regretted that it had been tinged with the tragedy of Jack Mitchell’s death.
Casting aside the suit activity and back in his jeans and shirt, he began exploring another carton in the back of the attic he hadn’t probed before. He was surprised to find a whole batch of more recent snapshots, not yet put into albums. How anyone could not want their family’s belongings was beyond him. When something happened to his mother someday, he would be there to clean out every trace from their old attic. As long as it doesn’t have any street value, of course. Nick’ll have that stuff cleared out before the funeral.
Photo after photo of family gatherings, some at holidays, were spread out on the dusty wood floor in front of him. Hanukkah is coming, and Ma’s not really up to making the trip this year. But Hutch’s parents are. They could come for Christmas. He dismissed that idea and kept sorting through the photos. Maybe he needs a little push. He’ll have regrets someday… Starsky wondered where that thought came from. Why in hell should he have regrets? They didn’t come for Sandra’s funeral, and they weren’t exactly parents of the year.
He went back to his sorting. Did they know how important it was to him that they come for the funeral? Did they only agree to come for the wedding because they felt it was socially proper, and did they think that was the only reason Hutch wanted them there? Did they feel needed to help him face his grief? Starsky tossed the photos he was holding down on the floor in front of where he sat Indian-style. He wanted to ask out loud where these thoughts were coming from. It was as if another voice was in his brain, annoying him with ideas that weren’t really his.
“Okay, Harry, you think I should talk Hutch into inviting his folks here, huh?” he asked one of the photos of the house’s last owner.
“Boo!” A male voice from behind startled him into tossing a couple of photos in the air. “Did I startle you?” Hutch was standing in the attic doorway, smiling innocently. “Who were you talking to up here, anyway? You slipping over the edge on me?”
“Probably,” Starsky replied, waiting a minute for his leaping heart to settle back to its normal pace. “Just talkin’ to old Harry here,” he responded, scooping up the photos and putting them back in the shoebox in which they had been stored.
“I hate to break this to you, buddy, but he’s dead.” Hutch lowered himself into the overstuffed chair Starsky usually occupied.
“Nobody’s perfect,” Starsky quipped, straightening up from his position on the floor. “How’d it go with Cecile? Apparently not as well as it could have, or you wouldn’t be home by,” he paused to check his watch, “eleven.”
“Work in the morning.”
“Ah,” Starsky answered, nodding solemnly, not believing work had anything to do with it.
“Okay, so I’m not exactly Don Juan, all right? Can we drop it?” Hutch’s voice held more of an edge than usual.
“Whatever you say,” Starsky responded, his tone gentle. He sat on the trunk near the old chair. “But if you wanna tell me what’s wrong, I’m listening.”
“It was a really nice evening.”
“Okay. BUT.”
“Huh?”
“There was a really big implied ‘but’ on the end of that statement, pal.”
“I like Cecile. A lot. And I think we can work past this whole mess with the gallery showing. As a matter of fact, things did move along pretty fast tonight. We had dinner, went back to her place…”
“I’m not pressing for conquest stories. If it’s private, just say so.”
“Conquest stories implies that there was any conquest. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me. Here’s this gorgeous woman, with a body that would stop traffic, and it’s not that she doesn’t turn me on…”
“But you still don’t wanna take it to first base, right?” Starsky watched with an affectionate smile as his partner nodded, and a blush started creeping across his face. “Rosey was the first for me…after Terry,” Starsky said quietly.
“You’re kidding.” The utterance of complete disbelief slid out before Hutch could stop it. He thought of some of the luscious, leggy women he’d seen out with his partner after a respectable time had passed. “What about Kathy?” Hutch thought immediately of the shapely stewardess they both knew, who had been with Starsky the night of the ill-fated double date with Diana Harmon. Hutch had assumed that relationship was a flaming one.
“Why do you think she stopped calling when she came to town?” Starsky smiled a little uneasily. “When you’ve loved somebody like you loved Sandy or I loved Terry…I don’t know what it is. It’s like the cheap thrills feel…wrong. At least they did to me. ‘Course, then I got together with Rosey, tryin’ for the real thing again, and that got shot to hell…so I guess the cheap thrills looked easier after all.” Starsky looked down at the floor, a little self-conscious at discussing the subject at all.
“But Cecile…I don’t think she’d be a cheap thrill. We’ve got some work to do on the relationship, but I think there could be something special with her.”
“So give it time.”
“How much time? She’s put up with being my pal for quite awhile now.”
“That’s not such a bad thing to be,” Starsky replied, grinning a little.
“For a woman, it probably leaves a little to be desired.”
“Okay, so it hasn’t exactly been a hot romance.” Starsky shrugged. “She knew when you started seeing each other that you were still trying to get over Sandy.”
“And trying, and trying, and trying…with no luck. I like Cecile, and just physically, yeah, she turns me on. But I like her well enough not to use her for that. Because right now, that’s all it’d be. I still love Sandra and I can’t get over that.”
“Maybe you need to quit tryin’ so hard. Look, I’m guilty of pushin’ you at Cecile, because I just kept feelin’ like she was a good one, but—”
“She is. That’s the problem. If she was just a…a one-nighter, someone I didn’t have some kind of emotional…investment in…if I didn’t think she cared anything about me beyond just having a good time…”
“All I’m sayin’ is let nature take its course. If it’s meant to happen with her, it will. If not, you’ll go your separate ways and something else’ll come along.”
“But I don’t want to go separate ways with Cecile. I guess I finally realized that when I saw her this afternoon. She’s not perfect, but hell, neither am I. But I really care about her.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Not in so many words…”
“Use the words. Trust me on this one. Women like words. Lots of ’em.”
“Advice from the love expert, huh?” Hutch chortled a little.
“Yeah, well, I’ll bill you for the consultation.”
“So, you wanna go out and pick up a couple of cheap bimbos?” Hutch asked, provoking a little laugh from his partner.
“No thanks. I’m working on a project of my own at the moment.”
“Christine, huh?”
“Well, you gotta admit, she’s not bad.”
“The way you two were dancing the other night, I was expecting you to leave with her.” Hutch referred to the little “task force dissolution” party that had taken place at The Pits after work. Christine and Starsky had started out dancing a little to the jukebox music, and by the time the song “Physical” came on, they seemed to be following the singer’s advice to “get physical.”
“Oh, that.” Starsky snickered a bit evilly. “Gotta show a little discretion around the gang from work, ya know. But I got a date with her Saturday night—dinner and,” he cleared his throat, “dancing.”
“Found more old photos over there, eh?”
“Yeah. And clothes, too. There’re some really neat old suits in the wardrobe over there.” Starsky had ignored the inner voice as long as he could. It was prodding again. “Hutch? Did you ever think about inviting your parents here for Christmas?”
“Not once. Why?”
“Well, I just wondered. I mean, we’ve got plenty of room, and you haven’t seen them at Christmas for what, three or four years now?”
“What brought this on?”
“I was thinkin’ that maybe if you guys got together again…I mean, when we went to visit them at Christmas, they seemed like pretty good people. They treated me like one of the family.”
“They opted to skip Sandra’s funeral. I’m sorry, Starsk, but that sticks in my throat.”
“Maybe they didn’t know how much it would mean to you for them to be there.”
“At my fiancee’s funeral? It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that was a pretty meaningful occasion.”
“Sure it was. But I was gonna be with you, and your friends are all here…maybe they didn’t think it mattered too much to you.”
“Why are you so concerned about me inviting my parents here all of a sudden?”
“Well, I don’t know exactly, but I just think it might be a good idea.”
“Starsky, my whole life is poised on the edge of disaster right now. I’m just waiting for that article to come out in The Chronicle detailing the information Jordan sent them.”
“Maybe he didn’t send them anything. That would be like him. Make you twist in the wind for weeks, wondering when the other shoe would drop. That’s his style.”
“And there’s still the heroin issue. That’d be a nice centerpiece for Mom and Dad’s visit. ‘Oh, by the way, your son’s also a closet junkie.’”
“Damn it, Hutch, for the last time, you’re not a junkie.”
“They wouldn’t see it that way. At least my father wouldn’t.”
“He wouldn’t care that you were forced? That you’ve never touched it since? Aw, come on.”
“You don’t know my father. There isn’t room for anything but perfection with him. Number one. Second place doesn’t exist—nobody remembers the person who almost won. You don’t know what my father was really like. You didn’t grow up with him.” Hutch ran his hand back through his hair and exhaled loudly. Starsky remained silent. “I’m only good enough when I’m perfect, and I’ve been a hell of a long way from that for a long time now.”
“That was when you were a kid, when he was pushing you to be the best you could. Maybe now that he doesn’t have to raise you anymore, you could be friends.”
“We’re friends, Starsky. When we visited there, he and I rode snowmobiles, had father-son chats…he got his digs in about my job, how little I had moved up in the department…when was I going to take the lieutenant’s test.”
“You wouldn’t have had a shot at that kind of promotion three or four years ago.”
“Tell him that!” Hutch snapped. “I’m John Hutchinson’s boy, which makes me special.”
“You said your family wasn’t always rich—wasn’t ‘old money.’ What your dad got, he earned, right? Turned a family farm into a money-making horse ranch?”
“Yeah, so?”
“That takes a lot of drive, ambition, commitment to being number one. Maybe he didn’t want you to grow up a lazy, spoiled rich kid—maybe he was afraid you wouldn’t achieve everything you could if you didn’t have the drive he had. He probably wanted you to be a success.”
“I can’t believe you’re sticking up for him.” Hutch shook his head. “Look, I love my father. I know he loves me. But I lived for the day I could get out on my own, out from under that constant…drive to achieve.”
“Sometimes parents do all the wrong things for all the right reasons,” Starsky responded softly. “Ya know, it hurt me a lot, and I’m not just talking about the obvious way, when my dad used his belt on me.”
“That wasn’t right no matter what his intent was, buddy.”
“Maybe not, but he thought he was teaching me right from wrong. Where I grew up, you couldn’t let a kid ride the fence. Little kids in grade school were running errands and doing odd jobs for the two-bit teenage hoods that were runners for the bosses. My dad saw all that shit up close and personal as a cop, and if he thought I was slipping over the line, showing any tendencies that weren’t right…he thought he was doing his duty as a parent to stop it. I don’t think he enjoyed it, but he thought he was doing the right thing. At least I have to believe that’s what he thought because I loved him too much to think that it wasn’t.”
Hutch took a deep breath. He hated talking about this one aspect of Starsky’s childhood: his otherwise loving father’s tendency toward a heavy hand in the discipline department… Stories he’d eventually been told of his partner hiding in a closet or under a bed to escape what he knew was coming. If he can forgive that…
“Starsk, I know what my father did wasn’t as bad as that, but—”
“Sure it was. In it’s way. It hurt you, it stressed you out, ruined a lot of your childhood…but don’t you think there was some point to it? I mean, the problem with kids are that they don’t come with instructions. You do what you know how to do with ’em. Try to do right by ’em.” Starsky was quiet a minute.
“That doesn’t make beating a child acceptable, babe,” Hutch stated in a soft voice.
“I don’t think he did it just to hurt me. He did it to make me the best I could be. ‘Course, he had lots of pressures at work, and his fuse got real short near the end too… I think our fathers were both takin’ different routes to do the same thing.”
“Maybe I’m not as forgiving as you are.” Hutch leaned back in the chair, tired of the conversation and tired of dredging up old pain.
“You forgave me.” Starsky seemed to still take responsibility for having committed an unthinkable betrayal regarding the paintings.
“Maybe because you’re worth it.” Hutch was a little startled he’d said it straight out, but he wouldn’t have retracted it for the world when he saw the smile spread across his partner’s face.
“Ditto, buddy.” Starsky was still smiling a little when he continued. “But maybe your dad meant well—and aren’t your parents worth it?”
“You shoulda been a lawyer, babe.” Hutch stood up, squeezing Starsky’s shoulder as he passed him on his way to the stairs.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What about Christmas?” Starsky persisted.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Fair enough,” the other replied, watching Hutch descend the steps to the second floor.
* * * *
No story on Hutch’s past, or detailing Evan Jordan’s perverted plans, surfaced in the press beyond the initial revelation that three women had died as a result of Jordan’s vendetta against Starsky and Hutch for arresting his father. Starsky had insisted that all information given to the press imply that they were both targets, because he didn’t want to see the public hang all the blame on his partner for the deaths of three innocent young women. By the time Hanukkah rolled around, both were feeling pretty safe in the assumption that Jordan had been bluffing about sending materials to a reporter.
Starsky’s mother called to share the news that her heart was doing just fine, but that she had an ulcer in her esophagus that had been causing the pain that came dangerously close to her heart. While an ulcer wasn’t happy news, Mrs. Starsky shared her son’s relief that it was nothing life-threatening, and something that could be controlled by medication. She still opted to rest and take it easy, rather than make a trip across country for Hanukkah.
Hutch busied himself with his own preparations for that year’s Hanukkah festivities. Starsky had a menorah in the front window, but he hadn’t said anymore about it than that. For his part, Hutch had found another detective at the precinct of the Jewish faith, and was learning the prayers that went with lighting the menorah. The other man had informed him that Hanukkah was not the biggest religious holiday of the Jewish faith, that he had missed Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur in the fall. A check of the calendar showed that, ironically, Starsky had been in the hospital, recovering from the beating by Curtis’s goons during that time. He made a mental note to be better educated next year.
There was also the matter of the gift. Even though custom would dictate a gift every night of Hanukkah, Hutch had opted for one large gift he bought with the proceeds from the sale of the paintings. It suddenly seemed inappropriate to make Starsky wait every year until Christmas to get “the loot,” when the holiday for his faith had already passed.
The thought of inviting his parents for Christmas nagged at Hutch, though Starsky said nothing more on the subject. His partner’s conviction that this was a good idea surprised Hutch, but then he recalled how well Starsky had gotten along with his parents when they visited Duluth one Christmas. It also gave him occasion to reflect on some of the good times he’ d had as a child, and the complete absence of physical violence from his home. He’d never had occasion to hide under a bed or in a closet from his father’s wrath. It was also true that what John Hutchinson now had, he’d worked tirelessly to attain. Maybe he was just passing down that ambition to his son…
On the first night of Hanukkah, Starsky went about lighting the candle, with Hutch by his side, expecting to say whatever prayer was said on his own, with his partner mutely watching. Hutch would have given anything for a camera to capture the look on the other’s face when a second voice joined in, in Hebrew, to say the blessing. He finished, the candle was lit, and then he turned to Hutch.
“I don’t understand—how did you…you knew the words?”
“Marty Rosenthal in Robbery helped me out a little. He’s also given me some pointers on some of the other holidays I should be looking out for.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Starsky muttered, his voice a little choked.
“I figured if you can learn the names of Santa’s reindeer, I oughtta be able to handle learning a few new words.” Hutch watched as his partner laughed a little, then pulled him into bear hug. “Happy Hanukkah, buddy,” he said, squeezing back. “I’ve got a present for you.” Almost squeezed breathless, Hutch wondered how much of it was his desire to give his partner the gift and how much was a defense mechanism against being crushed.
“A present?” Starsky released him, as expected. Sentiment was nice, but presents were presents, and they demanded immediate attention.
“Park it on the couch, and I’ll go get it.” Starsky obeyed the directive, waiting as patiently as he was capable of where presents were concerned until Hutch returned with the large box, wrapped in blue and silver paper with a huge silver bow on top. He set it down on the coffee table with a little grunt, which only whetted Starsky’s appetite when he realized how heavy it must be.
“Can I open it?”
“Since when have you asked permission? Of course you can open it, dummy.” Hutch laughed a little as he patted Starsky’s back. The other man was seriously preoccupied from that point forward in tearing paper, disengaging ribbon and casting it all aside to get a look at what lurked beneath it. Hutch watched as his partner’s eyes widened in shock at what he saw. A video cassette recorder sat there among the shreds of wrapping paper.
“Is this really ours?”
“No, I got a hot one from one of Huggy’s friends,” Hutch retorted, smiling. “Of course it’s really yours.”
“I don’t get it. We can’t afford this. Neither one of us can—not after some of the stuff we did for the house.”
“Thanks to you, I’m a money-making artist, remember?”
“What? Hutch, you mean you used that money for this?”
“Yup.”
“But I thought you were putting that in the bank.”
“That’s what I wanted you to think.”
“Are you sure about this?”
“Hey, come on, I’m supposed to be the sensible one here. You’re taking all the fun out of it,” he teased gently.
“I just can’t believe it. You don’t know how bad I wanted one of these things.”
“Actually I do. You’ve been talking about it for two years now.”
“When’d you get this?”
“A few days after I picked up the check for the paintings.”
“Where’d you hide it? It’s not exactly tiny.”
“If you think I’m tellin’ you where my hiding places are in this house, you’re crazier than I thought you were.”
“This is so…amazing.” Starsky stared at the box on the coffee table, almost laughing with the pure delight of the gift.
“I hear they work better if you take them out of the box, Starsk. Let’s get it hooked up, huh?”
“Yeah, good idea.” Starsky took charge of carrying his treasured parcel back to the TV room, where they settled in with the instructions and the back of the television turned toward them to get it hooked up. After almost an hour, it was hooked up, the clock set, the channels programmed, staring back at them.
“I got a couple tapes. I’ll go get those, and we can find something to test drive it on.” Hutch hurried upstairs, and Starsky found himself trying to listen to the floorboards to determine exactly where Hutch had found that was safe to hide a Hanukkah present this size. Of course, he probably hid the tapes in another location than the VCR.
“What should we tape?” Starsky turned on the TV set.
“Let’s see.” Hutch flipped through the TV Guide. “Let’s tape the movie on channel eight while we watch the ball game.”
“Great idea.”
Carefully following the instructions, they started the tape rolling for the movie, and then gathered snacks for the ball game.
“I still can’t believe you bought me that,” Starsky said, watching the various colored lights on the VCR’s control panel registering its activities while they watched the game. “‘Thanks’ seems kinda…inadequate.”
“It’ll do, buddy.”
“But that was your money from the paintings—rainy day money.”
“I think we’ve had enough rainy days that we’ve paid our dues on this one.”
“Still…well, thanks, Hutch.”
“You’re welcome, partner. Now quit talkin’ over the game, huh?”
“Oh, right,” Starsky acknowledged, grinning a little. Hutch had taken all the expressions of gratitude he could handle for one night.
After watching the ballgame, it was, of course, necessary to sit up and watch the movie that had been taped. The VCR proved itself to be all the salesman in the electronics store had promised. It delivered a clear picture and sound, and elicited such a complete child-like thrill and fascination in Starsky, that Hutch couldn’t help but be amused. They saw several scenes in slow motion, a couple in fast motion, froze more than one frame and ran a few sequences in fast backward motion.
Glad it was a Friday night, Starsky crawled into bed near three in the morning. The evening replayed in his mind like one of the tapes in his new VCR. Hutch had learned Hanukkah blessings in Hebrew, he’d bought Starsky the toy he’d wanted more than any other for months now… Feeling very contented and very special, Starsky dozed off into a deep sleep.
* * * *
Hutch tossed and turned until close to five in the morning. He could get up soon and start Saturday morning. One nice thing about having a big house was that they could do essentially what they wanted at any time and not wake the other. Finally discouraged with bed, he got up, pulled on his robe and wandered out into the hall. Passing Starsky’s room, he could hear quiet, even snoring through the gap between the door and the frame. He smiled to himself remembering the complete delight on Starsky’s face at the sight of the VCR, and his emotional response to Hutch’s fairly competent attempts at Hebrew. Reading that stupid card on your dresser reminded me that I don’t show you very often, and I sure as hell don’t tell you any more often…only when you’re close to death, or missing, or can’t hear me. Well, it feels good to have changed that, just a little.
So what’s the draw to the attic, huh? Hutch pondered as he mounted the narrow staircase to the door above. He took in the view of the cartons, chests, and various other old pieces of furniture. Guess he loves this just like any kid would…all these old treasures—i.e., junk. You’d think he was the long lost Oliver relative the way he sorted and tidied and organized this stuff. As if it should matter to him now. He didn’t know any of you, but he adopted you anyway. Maybe it’s knowing that the people who should care don’t that makes him so solicitous about this old junk.
Hutch seated himself in the chair and sorted through some of the photos. All family pictures of Harry Oliver, his wife, and their now-errant children. How happy they looked on the surface. Hard to believe none of them care about any of this. But for some bizarre reason, Starsky cares. Hutch put the photos back in the shoebox he’d been rifling through.
Family is important…don’t let it slip away, because when it’s gone, you can’t get it back… Hutch didn’t know where that thought had come from, but he knew he’d been uneasy, wrestling the idea of inviting his parents for Christmas. Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea. What could it hurt? What will it solve? Probably nothing. But maybe you won’t feel so bad when you have to bury one of them. Hutch shivered a little. He hadn’t been thinking thoughts like that. Both his parents seemed healthy, and he didn’t consider there was any vendetta between them. Just not much rapport.
What do I have to show my father that will make him happy? I’m still just a cop, living with my partner beyond my means in a big old house that’s half fixed up…no grandchildren for you yet, Dad. No big promotion. I don’t want one. So what does that make me? A dismal failure? Probably. But maybe our definitions of success are too different to reconcile. Course, we haven’t tried lately, have we? Hutch was a little surprised at the course his thoughts were taking. It was as if a little voice inside was urging him to invite his parents for Christmas, to take Starsky’s advice, to acknowledge that his father was less of an ogre and more of a flawed human, just like the rest of the people out there.
Starsky’s old man sometimes smacked him or used a belt on him, and he still has his picture on the wall of his room and can overlook a massive flaw in his parenting practices and see the love there. But that’s Starsky. He can overlook damn near anything if he loves somebody enough… So why can’t I give it a shot? Take a look at the old man and his flaws for what they are and then look a little further. Look at the time he spent teaching me to ride, taking me to ball games, cheering at every basketball game, teaching me to drive—and being brave enough to sit in the death seat while I tried it… Hutch laughed at the memory. Somehow these thoughts of his father didn’t mesh with the evil ogre that never accepted second place. They were the same man, but that driving perfectionism was a flaw, just like all humans have.
And he never raised a hand against me, no matter how angry he got.
Then there’s Mom. All the stuff she did all those years…kind of like throwing out the baby with the bathwater to ignore her because you and the old man don’t see eye to eye. Maybe after enough years have passed, you could all reach some kind of understanding…
“Okay, Harry.” Hutch took a look at the older man in the photos, smiling with his elderly wife firmly tucked under the embrace of one arm. “What is it with this attic, anyway?” He shivered a little and headed back downstairs to make some coffee.
Hutch had fixed breakfast for himself, eaten and was already at work on hauling junk out of the basement when Starsky came yawning his way down the back stairs near ten in the morning. Disheveled, unshaven and still in his robe, he grumbled a marginally obscene protest at having to make a new pot of coffee, and after finishing that task, started searching the refrigerator for remnants of the previous night’s pizza. He heard his partner rattling around below, and mumbled something unpleasant to himself about early birds and morning people.
“Morning,” Hutch greeted as he entered the kitchen, carrying yet another carton destined for the garage, which was the last step before the trash pick-up. “Found a few more Christmas decorations in this one you might want to take a look at. Even some lights. Thought I’d test ’em later.”
“Okay,” Starsky responded through a mouthful of cold pizza.
“I made a decision,” Hutch announced, and that caught Starsky’s attention, hazy though it still was before his coffee. “I’m going to call my folks and invite them for Christmas.”
“That’s great!” Starsky responded enthusiastically. “I think you’re makin’ the right decision.”
“I figured you would,” Hutch said, smiling a little as he knelt by the carton on the floor and started pulling out old strings of lights.
“You’ll probably electrocute yourself.” Starsky poured himself a cup of coffee, found Hutch’s cup in the sink and refilled it.
“Merry Christmas to you too, buddy.”
“Those look pretty old. I wouldn’t chance it.” Starsky set the cups on the table and took a seat to watch Hutch untangle the old lights.
“Feel free to jump in anytime,” Hutch commented sarcastically, as he seemed to be getting into a worse tangle than he was in when he opened the box.
“Two people pullin’ at it just makes it worse. They’re havin’ sales on those things all over town.”
“Are they giving them away?” Hutch snapped back, still working dilligently on the mess in front of him.
“They don’t cost a fortune,” Starsky replied, adequately chastised for his fit of fiscal irresponsibility. “When those things blow up, your funeral and the electrician’s bill are gonna cost more than the lights.”
“Smart ass,” Hutch retorted, laughing a little.
“Okay, I give up.” Starsky took a seat on the floor across from Hutch and started working with him on untangling the cords. “If we’re gonna go out, might as well be together. Hell, at least we’ll make festive corpses—wrapped in Christmas lights.”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you have a sick sense of humor?”
“Yeah, you. All the time. After you get done laughin’. What’s that say about you?”
“Hanging around with you all these years warped me.”
“Or loosened you up, depending on how you look at it,” Starsky replied, satisfied to have solved one tangle, irritated at the creation of another.
“You’re right. These are hopeless.” Hutch tossed his handful back in the box. “Get dressed. We’ll go get some new ones.”
“Oh, yeah—I wanna get the outside of the house done this weekend.” Starsky straightened up and headed for the stairs, hurrying up to get ready for the light-shopping expedition.
Hutch took that opportunity to dial his parents’ number. Might as well get the invitation on their calendar. He dialed and waited for a response.
“Hello?”
“Mom? It’s me. How are you?”
“Ken! I’m just fine. It’s so good to hear your voice.”
“Same here. I, ah, was wondering what you and Dad had planned for Christmas.”
“Well, Sally’s giving a huge party this year,” she referred to his sister, who lived with her husband on an adjacent ranch. “I’m probably going to be tied up with helping her out from now until New Year’s!” She had an amused delight to her voice, relishing helping her daughter throw the big Christmas bash this year. Normally, the elder Hutchinsons hosted a Christmas party which had become legendary among the Duluth jet set, complete with sleigh rides, elaborate dinners and overnight lodging for a select group.
“I was going to ask if you and Dad wanted to come and spend Christmas here. We’ve got the house in pretty good shape now—it still needs work and decorating, but it’s looking pretty good.”
“Oh, Ken, we’d love to—any other year. This is the first time Sally’s tackled doing the party, and she’s really counting on me. What a sweet invitation! You know you’d always be welcome to come here—you could bring someone, or bring David if he wants to come.”
“Thanks, Mom, but I think we’ll be spending Christmas at home.” Hutch was surprised at himself how much staying where they were, in this house, felt like being home for Christmas. “No chance Sally could wing it on her own?”
“No, dear, I’m sorry. I wish you’d reconsider coming out here. We’d love to see you.”
“Thanks anyway, Mom. The schedule’s been pretty hectic, and I don’t think we can get a lot of time off. We’ve had to take some time already, after Sandra, and then Starsky was off work for awhile…I think we’ve stretched Dobey’s good humor as far as it’ll go.”
“What a shame. If anything at all changes, just let us know. We’d love to have you.”
“Thanks. I will.”
“Everything is going along well at work?” she asked.
“Fine. Things have settled down a little now that the Bridegroom case is over.”
“You should be very proud of yourself for bringing that lunatic to justice.”
“I didn’t do anything. It all happened because he was out to get me. If he hadn’t grabbed Starsky to drag me out to meet with him, we’d probably still be chasing our tails.”
“Still, you managed to overpower him and rescue David.”
“Actually, Starsky got loose and shot him. I was unarmed.”
“I see. Well, it’s fortunate that you both came out of it all right. That’s the important thing.”
“Yeah. In this business, you just never know how many Christmases you’ve got left, I guess. Well, I’ll be in touch, Mom. Good luck with the party plans.”
“Ken, I am sorry about not being able to come out there.”
“Right. I know. Tell Dad I said ‘hi.’”
Starsky came bounding downstairs as Hutch said his good-byes.
“You called your folks? When’re they comin’?”
“They’re not.” Hutch dug through his pocket for his car keys. “I’ll drive.”
“Hang on a minute. Why not?”
“Sally’s giving the big party this year—remember the sleigh rides and the big dinner and all that crap?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, my mother apparently is needed to coordinate it. But we’re invited there, of course,” he concluded with a sneer.
“You wanna go?”
“No.” Hutch started toward the back door, with Starsky close on his heels. They got into the Mercury and Hutch started up the engine.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out. Maybe next year.”
“Yeah. Sure. If Sally isn’t having a horsheshoe contest or my father isn’t selling a thoroughbred—in other words, if there’s nothing better to do.” Hutch pulled out onto the street a little faster than necessary.
“If Sally’s counting on your mother for help—”
“Damn it, Starsky, will you stop sticking up for them? God! They passed on coming to Sandra’s funeral—that should’ve given me the message. That was a business deal—I guess I forgot to mention that. I called Sally to wish her happy birthday, back in September, and while we were talking, she let something slip about my dad buying this horse with all these impressive names connected to his bloodline, and how tough a deal it was to orchestrate. He bought the fucking horse in April—same time Sandra died. So that’s why they fumbled for some excuse and didn’t come.”
“I’m really sorry, buddy. If I’d known that—”
“I knew it, and I was still dumb enough to try to invite them here for Christmas. Won’t make that mistake again.”
“I wish it had turned out differently. But hey—we’ve done Christmas on our own before. Won’t be so bad.”
“It’s not that.” Hutch concentrated on the traffic, which was a bit heavier as they neared the discount store that would be their first stop.
“I don’t blame you for feeling bad about them not coming. I feel worse about the funeral. I had no idea it was something like that—business. I thought maybe since your dad had some heart problems last year…or maybe they thought they weren’t really needed.”
“It’s nothing new. I had to bust my ass to get a pat on the head. All Sally had to do was be born. She was always the goddamn little spoiled princess of the family.”
“Are you really mad at her or mad at your folks?”
“I’m not mad at any of them. I’m mad at myself for not knowing my place. First off, Sally was their little princess from the moment she was born. She could get mediocre grades, get into trouble, act like a spoiled brat—and the old man still thought the sun rose and set in her. I spent my whole fucking life trying to do everything right and I was lucky to get a passing glance. Valedictorian was good for some fanfare, and Summa Cum Laude from college was worth noticing.” Hutch shook his head in dismay. Starsky didn’t comment on the fact they’d passed the discount store and were heading out of the business district again.
“He was grooming an heir, Hutch. That’s why you had to be perfect. Sally was just supposed to be a pretty girl who’d marry well. You had to be the one to carry on for him. To be as good as he thinks he is.”
“Now I’m a cop in California and Sally’s waiting to inherit the ranch. Isn’t that a kick in the ass?” Hutch snorted a little laugh.
“Do you think he’s really thrilled about that, or is he making the best of it? Wouldn’t he have driven Sally like he drove you if he’d thought she’d be the one at the helm someday?”
“I don’t know. Shit, I passed the store.” Hutch slowed the car and pulled into the parking lot of a closed bank to turn around.
“Just stop the car a minute, okay?”
“What for?”
“Just stop.” Starsky waited while Hutch brought the car to a stop in a parking spot in the middle of the empty lot. “You both had your roles to play, buddy. You were supposed to be the protégé of the old man—ambitious, driven. Sally just had to be his daddy’s girl—you were the one who would run things someday.”
“And then I screwed up and became a cop. He looked at me like an investment gone bad. Years and years of effort yielded nothing.”
“Did he ever say that?” Starsky didn’t like Hutch’s father’s obsession with achievement any better than his partner did, but he hated the idea more that Hutch felt so unloved by his parents.
“Here and there. Not all at once. But he was furious when I went into the academy, he’s been furious that I didn’t strive for promotion, he’s made remarks about no grandchildren, and he never lets an opportunity pass to drop a little anecdote about some friend’s son who just achieved some big fancy title at a law firm or Fortune 500 company—or who is moving up the ranks in the family business to take over someday. He’s got a kid to take over. It’s not like nobody’s going to carry on the ranch when he’s dead.”
Hutch stared out the window in silence for a few seconds. Starsky didn’t say anything, glad that Hutch seemed to be talking through it, and not wanting to slow him down. “I’m tired of not being good enough, no matter what I do. And I’m tired of…I don’t know…” His voice was a little hushed, and Starsky could tell he knew exactly what he wanted to say but was hesitating to say it.
“Tired of what else, buddy?” he prodded gently.
“I’m tired of…of not feeling like they give a damn about me because I’m a cop in California instead of a horse rancher in Duluth. I’m tired of feeling like that poor, stupid kid that busted his ass to please them and rarely ever managed it.” Hutch looked over at his partner. “I know they loved him, so I try to be him whenever I’m with them, but I can’t pull it off anymore because I’ve failed them in so many ways I can’t even count them.”
“Hutch, you haven’t failed anybody. I think that—”
“Look, you don’t get it, Starsk. And that doesn’t surprise me, because you think that real love is unconditional. I hate to shatter that illusion, but a lot of love out there is conditional.” Hutch’s eyes returned to the view through the windshield. Starsky said nothing. He had no reply to that. “Let’s go get the lights. We better get started if we want to have the outside done today.” Hutch started up the car and pulled out of the lot into the traffic. Both were silent until they found a parking spot in the crowded lot in front of the K-Mart store.
“You never failed me, buddy,” Starsky said quietly. “Not once.”
“Quit worrying about dragging my family here for Christmas, Starsk. I’ve already got my family right here.” He squeezed Starsky’s arm quickly and then was out of the car, ready to go. Starsky got out, hurried around the back of the car and fell into step with his partner. Before long, they were debating what kinds of decorations they’d get for the front of the house, laughing at the absurdity of the plastic yard snowmen as decorations in a town that never saw any snow.
* * * *
Two hours, endless bickering, and a considerable amount of spent money later, they returned to the trunk of the Mercury with two filled shopping carts. Starsky figured out a way to stuff the plastic snowman in the back seat.
The exterior decorating project was more fun than either of them anticipated, despite a few annoying moments. Once they’d figured out where the lights could be plugged in, and had made another trip back to the store for outdoor extension cords, they were ready to get creative.
Starsky took up residence on the top step of the porch, wrapping the synthetic pine garland they’d bought with Christmas lights. This would be hung along the roofline and the railings of the new porch, swag style.
Hutch hung a wreath on the door and then set about putting the lights on the small evergreen tree in the front yard. Surrounded by mostly gnarled, aged oaks, the little pine tree looked almost as if it were just waiting for Christmas to snatch the spotlight from its larger, more ominous neighbors.
Christmas music startled Hutch as he was putting the finishing touches on his light-hanging project on the ten-foot tree in front of him. He laughed a little when he saw that Starsky had brought a portable cassette player out on the porch to help them get in the mood for the rest of the day’s work.
Starsky trekked over to Mel’s and borrowed a second ladder so they could both work on hanging the lighted pine garland.
“Bet you still don’t know the names of Santa’s reindeer,” Starsky challenged, carefully checking the dip of garland between two nails. On a ladder about ten feet away, Hutch shook his head with a little grin. “It’s not hard to learn. You learned all that Hebrew for Hanukkah but you don’t know who the reindeer are.”
“I’m sure Santa Claus will be so offended he won’t stop here,” Hutch said sarcastically.
“You never know. Come on—you remember that poem—about the ‘Night before Christmas,’ don’t ya?”
“Only I could draw a Jewish partner who memorized that damned poem.”
“On Dancer, on Prancer, on Donner and Blintzen—”
“That’s ‘Blitzen,’ you idiot,” Hutch shot back, fumbling with an ornery, uneven stretch of garland.
“You say it your way, I’ll say it my way. Now, before I was so rudely interrupted—”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll interrupt you all right.”
“Ooh, I’m shakin’,” Starsky retorted, laughing a little.
“You don’t think you have anything to worry about, eh, smart aleck?”
“I—” Starsky stopped dead when he saw Hutch smiling evilly and flexing all ten fingers in his direction as he leaned on the ladder rungs. “You wouldn’t. I’m on a ladder—I could fall and break my neck!”
“You’re up there now, but you’ve gotta come down sometime.”
“Wanna bet?” Starsky’s horrible susceptibility to tickling was one weakness that Hutch rarely played upon, but when he did, he was capable of reducing his partner to a teary-eyed, red-faced, breathless, hysterical basket-case.
“Chicken,” Hutch muttered, going back to his garland-hanging project. A few moments of silence passed while the final work was completed on the hanging. “How about turning it on and taking a look? Then I can fix it while I’m up here.”
“You want me to come down first? I don’t think so.” Starsky shook his head.
“Starsky, grow up, will you? Now just go down and test the lights.” Hutch waited while his partner reluctantly started down his ladder and went to the spot on the porch where the lights were to be plugged in. Hutch kept his word and stayed put, following Starsky’s directions to fix the uneven spots in the lights. The overcast day wasn’t as perfect as night time for the project, but it was easier to see the colored bulbs than it would have been with sunshine.
“Come down and look at it!” Starsky urged excitedly. When Hutch joined him on the sidewalk, he had to admit it was pretty festive. The colored lights adorned the garlands strung on the porch and the little pine tree next to which the fat plastic snowman sat. Starsky held up his hand and Hutch delivered the anticipated “high-five.”
“What time’re you picking Christine up?”
“Oh, terrific.” Starsky fled back toward the house.
“I’ll pick this stuff up. Go ahead and get dressed, Romeo.” Hutch watched the fleeting blur known as Starsky head for the side door, which would give him the fastest access to the stairs and finally his closet. Something told Hutch that Starsky would be carefully selecting the look for this evening out.
Dusk was just encroaching now, and Hutch noted with some satisfaction that the house looked great. He was still a bit depressed at his parents’ refusal of his invitation, but like he’d told Starsky in the car, he felt like his real family was with him right here in this house…at home.
* * * *
Starsky crept in the side door as quietly as possible. It was almost four in the morning, and he hoped to slide up to his room without waking his partner. The date with Christine had been all he’d hoped it would be, and now he just wanted to fall into bed and sleep until about noon.
He moved stealthily up the stairs and tip-toed along the upstairs hall until he noticed a little glow of yellow light coming from the library. He continued to approach it slowly and quietly. Hutch’s room was farther down the hall, and there was no way to check there first to see if it was indeed Hutch burning the pre-dawn oil.
“Starsk?” The familiar voice both startled and reassured him at the same time.
“Yeah, it’s me.” He wondered how Hutch could have possibly heard him. Of course, there were a couple of healthy creaks that defied anyone to “sneak” anywhere in the upstairs hall.
“Have a good time?” Hutch asked. He was sitting against the arm of the big brocade-covered sofa near the bookshelves, his feet up and the old throw that usually adorned the back of it over his legs. The book he’d been reading now rested on his lap.
“Waiting up for me, Dad?” Starsky sat on the corner seat of the couch, kicked off his shoes and tossed his jacket aside. He nudged at Hutch’s feet and legs to give him room to mirror the other’s position.
“Couldn’t sleep.” He rubbed his eyes.
“You look tired, buddy. Anything wrong?”
“Just…restless I guess.”
“Thinking about your folks?”
“What? No. Not anymore. I keep wondering…doesn’t it seem a little funny to you that it all ended so easily with Jordan?”
“I wouldn’t call any of that easy, pal.”
“But he didn’t send anything to The Chronicle. How do you figure that?”
“So you’ll do just what you’re doing—tear yourself up with worry over something that won’t ever happen. He was bluffing. Maybe he thought you’d hesitate to take him out if you got the chance if you thought your cover was blown anyway.”
“Maybe. I just feel like we’re…living in the shadow of the other shoe that’s about to drop.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever hear anymore about it, buddy. I really don’t. But even if we do, I told ya before, we’ll make it.”
“I believe that.”
“Good.”
“How’d things go with Christine?”
“What can I say? You know what power I have over women. She couldn’t keep her hands off me.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” Hutch replied sarcastically.
“Just jealous, as usual,” Starsky responded smugly.
“Why do you think Jordan didn’t send something to the newspaper?”
“I don’t know,” Starsky responded. Sick little bastard probably had something else up his sleeve that just hasn’t hit us yet, Starsky thought. He kept that to himself.
“I don’t want to quit, Starsk. For years, I’ve struggled with whether or not I wanted this job. To stay in it and take the risks. But I think it’s what we are, and we’re good at it, and I don’t want to leave it. Now I have to get up everyday wondering how long I’ll have a job.”
“We could always move to Duluth and be horse ranchers.” Starsky had a little smile on his face, but he was serious. If that’s where life took them, well, he’d just have to get used to a different kind of horsepower under him.
“Yeah, sure. I can see you being happy out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I hear the University of Minnesota has some pretty good programs, and if your dad would hire me, might help pay the tuition.”
“What are you talking about?” Hutch looked genuinely puzzled.
“I’ve been looking into taking some classes starting in the winter. I want to get my degree. It’s not just this situation, though that kind of convinced me. It’s just that I know I don’t have anything to fall back on if my job falls through. I sort of thought about that when everything came down with Gunther, and I was laid up for so long. And now with this situation…I was trying to figure out what in hell I’d do for a living. So I’m gonna go back and really do it this time. I know I’ve fiddled around with a few classes here and there, but now I’m serious.”
“I think that’s great, buddy. What’re you going to take?”
“Don’t know yet. I’ve got a couple psychology classes and a couple criminology classes…I figure if I’m really going for a degree, there are a lot of requirements I have to take before I have to pick a major. I mean, I don’t wanna leave what I’m doin’, but I don’t like not having a back up plan.”
“What do you know about the University of Minnesota?”
“They made you smart, didn’t they?” He poked Hutch with his foot.
“They did their best,” Hutch replied, laughing a little. He paused, then looked back up at Starsky. “You’d actually move to Minnesota and live on a horse ranch?”
“Hey, you know me. I’ll try anything once.”
“Think I’ll turn in.”
“Me too. If Dobey calls us in tomorrow, I’m gonna kill him.” Starsky got up and started toward the door, with Hutch close behind him.
“Jury’ll never convict you, either.”
“Just for your information, Christine knew the names of all the reindeer.”
“Glad to hear you had such a meaningful and mature encounter.”
“It was mature enough. You wouldn’t believe when she recited those reindeer names. And you couldn’t even do it hanging garlands.” Starsky didn’t fully expect the attack that came from behind, knocking him on his stomach on his bed. The magic fingers were dancing horribly over his mid-section, and the tickle-induced hysteria began.
“I told you to drop that reindeer thing, didn’t I?” Hutch barked in a tone that was about as frightening as the concept of being tickled into submission. “Huh?”
“Get offa me!” Starsky gasped out, before another fit of uncontrolled laughter rattled him. He thrust a foot backwards toward his attacker, but Hutch was used to the usual moves. Starsky wasn’t capable of a whole lot when he was disabled this way. Good thing street thugs didn’t think of tickling the cop that tackled them. Hutch, for his part, was laughing almost as hard as his partner, though not quite, revelling in the pure silliness of the moment. Nothing in their lives had been this light-hearted…well, since the last time he’d tackled his unsuspecting partner and tickled him into a frenzy over some inane argument Hutch was intent on winning.
“Name those reindeer now, smart ass!” Hutch demanded through his own laughter.
“Please…I can’t…” Starsky was still laughing, but he was getting breathless, pinned under Hutch and unable to stop the torturous laughter.
“Come on, name ’em!” Hutch challenged. A particularly sensitive spot was hit under his ribs, and he decided it was time to really holler uncle as another fit of breathless laughter captured him.
“Hutch, you…gotta…quit it…I can’t…” Starsky was to the point of no return, or so he thought, when the hands were mercifully withdrawn. Hutch always knew when the real signal was to let up, and that was it. He removed his weight from on top of his partner, letting him have a few seconds to breathe. Maybe he’d stopped wrestling and rough-housing around with Starsky very much because ever since the shooting, there was a definite difference in his partner’s recovery time. Though Starsky insisted there was no pain involved, he was breathless longer since his lung had been damaged by the shooting.
“You okay, there, partner?” Hutch sat back on the end of the mattress and patted Starsky’s back.
“I think I’m dyin’.” He rolled onto his back, still panting, but grinning. “You shithead.”
“You asked for it.”
“Like hell.”
“You and your freakin’ reindeer. Let’s see. There was Donner, Dancer, Prancer, Nixon—”
“Blintzen,” Starsky corrected.
“Oh—no, it was Blitzen.”
“Start over.”
“Dancer—”
“You started with Donner.”
“Oh. Donner, Dancer, Prancer, Blitzen, Comet, Cuban, Rudolph—”
“It was Cupid and Rudolph doesn’t count.”
“You wanna argue the point?” Hutch flexed his fingers.
“Okay, Rudolph it is,” Starsky replied, laughing a little.
“‘Night, buddy.” Hutch stood up and headed for the door.
“Hey,” his rumpled partner called to him as he hoisted himself on his elbows, “sleep tight, babe. Don’t worry about anything, okay?”
“Okay. ‘Night, Starsk.”
* * * *
Starsky had to admit that sometimes seeing festive Christmas decorations in a police precinct headquarters could be nothing short of bizarre. With all the fanfare of two important armed robbery/homicide suspects being dragged along the hall, gold tinsel and cardboard Santa Claus’s shared the spotlight.
A significant swat on his rear end made him spin around before he ever entered the squad room.
“Gotcha!” Christine wielded her newspaper over her head as she headed down the hall toward the exit. Starsky scanned the hall quickly. No one seemed to have noticed the exchange. He was still repressing a giggle, and thoughts of setting up some plans for that evening with Christine, when he strutted into the squad room.
“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Hutch asked, reading a fairly unpleasant coroner’s report on their latest homicide case. “Man, what a way to spend the holidays. Take a look at this.” He handed the folder across the desks to Starsky.
“Nice,” Starsky commented sarcastically as he held the folder with one hand and filled their coffee cups using the other. “What kind of pervert…” Starsky shook his head as he sat down with the file, reading the clinical details of the rape-murder case. “We working with Sex Crimes on this one at all?”
“I already called Jan Holland—she’s going to meet with us this morning, see if we can work up a profile of this sicko.”
“She’s really good. I hear she helped the feds bust some big case when she was on the force in DC.”
“She’s taking training to do criminal profiling—but I swear to God, she could save the tuition. That woman’s got an eye for it.” Hutch had only had one instance to work with the friendly, middle-aged Holland, who gave the appearance more of an average homemaker than a top-notch cop. She was very definitely the latter, having built a real expertise in profiling—and catching—rapists and other perverted criminals whose bizarre patterns of violence held vital clues to their identities.
“So do we get Christmas Day off?” Starsky tossed the folder on the desk. His partner’s ability to shift gears sometimes still amazed Hutch, but then it was probably that ability that had kept the other sane all these years. Starsky had the biggest heart in the world, and in their business, you couldn’t afford to think with that all the time.
“Christmas Eve day, we’re on call but we don’t have to come in unless something urgent comes up. Christmas Day we’re off. After that, it’s back to the grindstone. Of course, all that’s assuming nothing breaks on one of the cases.”
“I sure hope something breaks on this turkey pretty soon. I really don’t want to see him mess up another girl like this.”
“It’s probably somebody she knew. Usually is.”
Jim Nedloe hurried through the door with his partner close behind him.
“Guess who just turned up missing?” Jim asked, settling on the edge of Starsky’s desk.
“Who?”
“Arnold Mercer. They did a roll call this morning, and he’s gone.”
“How long has he been unaccounted for?” Hutch demanded.
“Probably since lights-out last night,” Jack spoke up. “Apparently he had some help from inside.”
“Jordan,” Hutch muttered.
“He’s dead,” Jack retorted.
“He’s behind this somehow. I just know it. Don’t look now, but this is the other shoe.”
“What?” Jim looked puzzled.
“Nothing,” Hutch responded, hastening to add, “I just mean it seemed as if things wrapped up too easily with Jordan.”
“Well, unfortunately, we can’t pin this one on a dead man.” Jack pulled out a chair and sat at the desk next to Hutch’s. “Just thought you oughtta know.”
“Are you guys in charge of looking for Mercer?” Starsky asked.
“Oh no. That bastard’s mine,” Hutch interjected. “I don’t care who’s officially looking for him. He’s mine.”
“Actually, Dobey did tell us it was our case.”
“He can’t do that!” Hutch objected loudly.
“Sorry to break this to you, Hutch, but he can and he did.” Jack leaned back in the chair. “But we’re not interested in freezing you guys out of this. That’s why we’re telling you about it. Four heads are better than two.”
“Hutch—take a look at the profile of the killer, based on the forensic evidence.” Starsky handed him the file. “And it matches the description of her boyfriend that her roommate gave us. She didn’t know his name, though.”
“Tall, blond male, blood type A negative.” Hutch looked up at his partner.
“I think we oughtta find out what Arnie’s blood type is, don’t you?” Starsky picked up the phone and called R&I. Minnie checked the files quickly while he waited, and came back with the expected answer. It was a match.
“Think Kelli Thompson could be the girlfriend Norton said Mercer roughed up?” Jack asked, referring to the dead woman.
“I’d put money on it,” Hutch retorted. “I suppose we could ask Norton about the girlfriend’s name.”
“Why should he tell us anything now?” Jim asked. “His deal’s been cut, he’s doin’ the time.”
“Because he likes to project this image of being ethical and decent despite the fact he’s a piece of garbage. He liked to imply that Mercer was somehow worse than he was, more violent. He might do it just to make himself look good.”
“Let’s go visit Norton.” Starsky rose from his chair. “If that’s okay with you guys.”
“Norton’s all yours. Just let us know what you find out,” Jack replied, not appearing in any particular hurry to relinquish the chair he occupied.
* * * *
Starsky had never seen any of his attackers’ faces that night, so for him, seeing Norton was meaningful to some extent. He didn’t, however, have much interest in dwelling on that past experience. There was a sick feeling in his stomach as they waited for Norton to be brought to the interrogation room.
If seeing Norton was significant for Starsky, seeing Starsky appeared almost more significant to Norton. He was jittery at the sight of his past victim, and very obviously working at avoiding eye contact with him.
“What’s this all about? I thought I was done having to answer questions.” Norton’s clasped hands, which rested on the table, were in the perpetual motion of figeting.
“We need the name of Mercer’s girlfriend. The one he used to get rough with.” Hutch sat in the chair closest to the prisoner, while his partner remained standing, leaning against a wall of the room. He didn’t seem interested in getting any closer to Norton than necessary.
“Why should I tell you that?”
“Because of this.” Hutch pulled the most gruesome of the pictures of the murdered girl out of an envelope and slid it in front of Norton.
“Oh God.” He pushed it away quickly, looking as if he might vomit.
“That could be Mercer’s handiwork. He got out, you know.”
“I know that. Big news around here.” Norton took a deep breath, and by accident, glanced up and had eye contact with Starsky. The two men evaluated each other for a moment, and Norton was the first to look away uneasily. “Kelli Thompson. He was dating a girl named Kelli Thompson, and he slapped her around quite a lot. I never thought that was right. I guess he got a little carried away one time, and she broke up with him right after that. But he was always trying to get her to take him back.”
“Thank you.” Hutch picked up the photo, keeping his tone of voice neutral.
“The things that happened that night,” he began, still looking at the table, and then looking back up at Starsky, “weren’t my idea. It was Mercer and Curtis—or Jordan or whatever the hell his name was.”
“But you could handle going along with it because after all, I was just a Jew pig, right? Isn’t that what you called me? Don’t ask me for absolution.”
“I could have kept quiet. Let Mercer take it all the way that night,” Norton added, feeling more assertive now. “It’s because of me you got to keep your legs together, Jew Boy.”
“You son of a bitch!” Hutch lunged at the other man, and grasping him by the collar, yanked him out of the chair and slammed him against the wall. “You perverted, stinking piece of shit!” Hutch barked into his face, yanking him forward and slamming him back against the wall again. “You better watch your back in this place—”
“Hutch!” Starsky was pulling him back, but was not successful in dislodging his partner’s fierce grip on the fabric of Norton’s gray prison uniform.
“If that’s the kind of action you like to see, asshole, I can make sure—”
“Hutch, shut up! Just drop it!” Starsky yelled, forcing his partner and the prisoner apart before Hutch could utter any more potentially incriminating threats. A guard appeared at the door.
“Everything under control in here?” he asked, addressing Starsky, as Hutch seemed in worse shape than the prisoner. Both were panting and glaring at each other.
“We were just leaving,” Starsky spoke up, pulling Hutch by the arm as he picked up the photo and headed for the door.
Hutch was silent as they stalked down the corridors, going through the various security points and slamming barred doors. Once back in the sunshine of a cool winter day, Starsky spoke first.
“Are you crazy? Threatening a prisoner? If that guard heard—”
“You heard what he said in there! How in hell did you expect me to react?”
“I don’t blame you for getting upset. But we got what we came for, and now we can put an APB out on Mercer in connection with the Thompson killing. We knew this wasn’t going to be fun.”
“When I think about what those bastards did to you…” Hutch’s fists were clenched until his knuckles turned white.
“It’s over, buddy. And all that crap that Norton spouts off—they’re just words.”
“Mercer’s out of the pen, Starsk.”
“I know. Don’t think I haven’t thought about that.” Starsky shuddered almost visibly. “I just hope this helps us nail him sooner.” Starsky didn’t comment on what it did to his insides to know that Mercer was indeed capable of the brutal rape and murder of his girlfriend. It reinforced the fear that had never quite left him after his first encounter with Mercer. And this same nut was involved in a revenge plot against Hutch…and the ultimate outcome of revenge plots are usually death for the victim. Mercer was certainly the maniac capable of carrying it out.
“The other shoe just dropped, Starsk.” Hutch slid into the passenger seat of the Torino. Jordan’s legacy was somehow buying Mercer’s freedom—probably pre-arranged through his father’s old connections. That figured. He’d set free the man who would willingly do the most damage for the least compensation. And I better put a lid on the panic…it can’t be easy for Starsky knowing he’s out. He doesn’t need me reminding him what that means.
* * * *
The other shoe just dropped, Starsk… Hutch’s voice echoed in Starsky’s brain as he shivered against the biting cold of a Minnesota winter. The ground was uneven under the thick layer of snow, forcing him to take his time trekking toward the spot he felt compelled to visit. The other shoe just dropped, Starsk… It was a morbid mantra that kept drilling at Starsky’s mind until he thought he’d go mad. Hutch’s voice, only distant, ghostly…is that what Hutch is now? A ghost? Or an angel?
The ground was too hard. People who die in the winter and aspire to be buried in Duluth have to wait until Mother Nature is ready to permit them entry. Where did they “store” Hutch for the winter? What’s the point of finding the Hutchinson plot? He’s not there…Why won’t they tell me where they put him? I can’t even be close to what’s left…I don’t know where to go! Starsky found himself standing in the middle of the desolate graveyard, feeling tears freeze on his face in the wind. Even his voice wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t move past the barrier…He tried so hard, and finally, a wail of complete agony, desolation and loss tore loose from his throat, echoing into the nothingness, unanswered and unconsoled. Then another, and another, Hutch’s name, over and over, shattering the silence, threatening to shake the snow off the pines by the sheer force of the pain behind it…
Hutch shot bolt upright in bed, his heart racing. Something had ripped the blanket of sleep away from him swiftly and violently. He heard it again—a scream from Starsky’s room…a deep-throated scream that was filled with agony and terror. Grabbing his gun off the lower shelf of his night stand, Hutch hurried out into the hall, his eyes darting both ways, trying to adjust to the dark. Sliding quickly along the wall, gun held up and close to his body, he soon found himself at Starsky’s bedroom doorway. His partner was sitting up in bed, shaking visibly, even in the shadows of the darkened room.
“Starsk?” Hutch started in response to Starsky’s little jump of surprise at his presence. “Starsky, it’s just me, buddy. What happened?” Hutch walked into the room and laid the gun on Starsky’s bedside table.
“Hutch? Hutch?” They were two little exclamations of disbelief and terror.
“That’s right, buddy, it’s just me.” Hutch sat on the edge of the bed and put his arms around his partner’s still-shaky form. “Pretty bad one, huh, babe?” He felt another nod against his shoulder as Starsky’s arms tightened around him. “It’s okay, buddy.”
“It was winter…the…cemetery…” Starsky forced out in little gasps through his tears.
“What were you doin’ in the cemetery, pal?” Hutch tried to keep his tone light, but he had never felt Starsky shaking this hard in his life, and he’d rarely had anyone squeeze him in the type of vise-like hold Starsky did. “Hey, Starsk, it’s okay, babe. Everything’s okay. I’m right here,” he murmured gently, hoping to calm his partner’s reaction to the nightmare.
“But you were dead!” he finally shouted into Hutch’s shoulder. “I couldn’t…find the…grave…in the snow…and they couldn’t….the ground was frozen…and you…they put you…somewhere…but I couldn’t find…I didn’t know…”
“It’s all right, buddy. Just let it out, I’m right here. I’m right here,” Hutch said softly, patting Starsky’s back lightly as he began a slight rocking motion. He felt a violent shudder of tears break loose and more followed. “Shhh. It’s gonna be okay, babe. I’m not planning on dyin’ anytime soon, pal.”
“Not…without…me, anyway,” Starsky forced out.
“Not either one of us.”
“I’m sorry…to…go off…like this, but—”
“I know. You don’t have to explain it, pal. I know. I’ve had a couple of nightmares like these in my life, and they’re just as scary and painful as the real thing.”
“It was so…real…I was…out there…all alone…calling to you…but you were…” Starsky choked out in little gasps before he gave in to the tears and just cried while Hutch held him.
“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s all over now. I’m right here, pal. I’ve got you.” Hutch waited a while until he felt Starsky calming a little.
“It’s…the nightmare…it was…worse…than any other one…I ever had.”
“All this stuff with Mercer and the case…it’s got us both a little jumpy.” Hutch rubbed Starsky’s back gently. “Nobody’s gonna take me out if I can help it.”
“I…couldn’t…stand it…Hutch…if…you…”
“Don’t dwell on that, buddy. Besides, we always manage to land on our feet somehow. You’re not gonna have to bury me anytime soon.”
“Not ever,” Starsky amended, shaking his head adamantly.
“Not ever? That’s a tall order, Gordo. I’ll see what I can do.” Hutch laughed affectionately. “You know I’m not ever going to go anywhere if I can help it.”
“I’m sorry,” Starsky managed, a little of his composure coming back.
“That’s okay, babe. I know it was bad. Just lean on me and try to relax, okay? I’m gonna stay right here.”
“I’m glad,” Starsky whispered, still shuddering a bit and slumping against Hutch. Oh, God, don’t ever die on me, partner. I couldn’t do this for real…
“Try to relax, buddy. And try to leave me a couple of ribs intact, okay?” Hutch teased gently, squeezing Starsky a little harder momentarily. The other’s grip loosened a bit.
“Just…wanna be sure you’re real.”
“I’m real, pal. And I’m fine. Healthy as a horse.”
“All that yogurt, right?”
“The yogurt, the vegetables, the shakes…I’m probably gonna out-live you, Mr. Junk Food Junkie.”
“I hope so.”
“No matter which one of us goes first, it isn’t going to be any picnic for the survivor, buddy. But after all the stuff we’ve shared, the good times we’ve had, neither one of us could ever really be alone.”
“I was all alone in that cemetery, Hutch. All alone. And I wanted to die.”
“It was a nightmare, babe. Probably brought on by this whole mess with Mercer cropping up again.”
“But it’s gonna happen someday.” Starsky’s matter-of-fact statement of reality chilled Hutch’s soul. Not that he hadn’t accepted that reality more than once during his partnership with Starsky. It just wasn’t something he wanted to think about any more often than absolutely necessary.
“I know. But it isn’t real now. Don’t borrow the pain, pal. One of us won’t ever have to feel it.”
“Unless we go out together in a big blaze of glory.” Starsky chuckled a little, straightening up and sitting back against the headboard.
“I’m not ruling that out as a possibility. Of course, I’d like a long life, and the blaze of glory thing gets less likely when you’re eighty.”
“Not really,” Starsky responded, mopping at his face and finally grabbing a kleenex off the night stand to blow his nose. “See, the way I figure it, as far in debt as we are now with the house and the renovations and the stuff we said we were gonna wait to do that we did anyway? We can’t afford to ever retire, so we’ll probably still be working the streets when we’re eighty.”
“Starsky, if we go by how far in debt we are right now, not only can we not afford to ever retire, but we can’t afford to die, either, so there’s really nothing to worry about.” Hutch was smiling, and after an exchanged look, they both burst out laughing.
“What I wanna know,” Starsky said, trying to repress the fit of giggles which were such a bizarre antithesis from the soul-tearing agony he’d been feeling, “is how you, Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, ended up payin’ $25 a yard for that carpeting on the stairs.”
“Hey, that was a sound move. That stuff’ll last.”
“Hutch, we barely ever go up the main staircase—we’re always running up the back stairs. We’ve got that cruddy indoor-outdoor stuff back there and this ritzy carpeting that’d stand up to a herd’a elephants out front.”
“This from the man who insisted on the most expensive drapes Covington’s has ever sold for those big windows in the living room? Don’t talk to me about throwing money around.”
“You wanted me to go to a classy decorating place to pick out the drapes, so what’d you expect?” Starsky asked, defensively.
“Just because I said foam-backs from the catalog would be cheesy didn’t mean you had to spend more on those than we did on the house,” Hutch retorted.
“Yeah, and we still hafta do the yard and the garage.”
“Oh, shit.” Hutch just tipped back on the bed, so he was lying across the foot of it. “I’m not gonna die in the line of duty. I’m gonna die of exposure after they foreclose on us and my cardboard box blows off’a me in a storm.”
“You regret buyin’ this house?” Starsky asked, trying to sound casual. He wasn’t sure he wanted the truth. But Hutch just chortled a little, and responded with a warm smile still on his face.
“Not for a minute.”
“Hutch?”
“What?”
“When your box blows away, you can share mine, okay?”
“It’s a deal,” Hutch replied, laughing.
CHAPTER 15
So we open up the quarrel
Between the present and the past,
We only sacrifice the future,
It’s the bitterness that lasts…
With the hunt for Arnold Mercer raging full tilt, it was a little difficult to find the Christmas spirit. Not to be daunted, Starsky managed to drag his partner out on a sunny Saturday afternoon—a rare day off—to pick out the tree that would be the main attraction of the indoor decorations. Since neither of them possessed a wealth of decorations, and money was getting tighter with each passing house payment and utility bill, they had scrounged together all of the remains of the Oliver decorations and grudgingly pulled out a credit card to buy more lights, a few boxes of ornaments and some garland. Hutch dismally observed that Starsky had better be resigned to having a nice tree with nothing under it. When his partner reminded him that by the time they were both 65, the house would be paid for, Hutch merely glared into the upbeat expression on Starsky’s face and stalked off down another aisle of the store to find a tree stand.
Tight budgets notwithstanding, no one dissuaded Starsky from buying pine boughs and red velvet bows to decorate the staircase. He hadn’t really felt too fondly toward the ornate, perfectly reproduced banister before now, always looking at it as a new copy of the old, historic original. But with the pine and bows hung from it, and two big poinsettias—courtesy of Cecile—on either side of the foot of the stairs, it was an impressive focal point of the house. And no one would know to look at it that the highly polished oak of this new structure hadn’t always been there.
Pulling the tree through the front door was probably the holiday’s most memorable experience, leaving both men alternately cursing, bickering, pushing, pulling, or laughing. Thirty minutes and what appeared to be several million pine needles later, it was in place, waiting like a giant, evergreen black hole to suck in the conservative supply of lights and decorations. Hutch had to admit that Starsky’s inspiration of buying several different flavors of candy canes was a stroke of genius, since they were fairly cheap and helped fill in the gaps left by their fledgling ornament collection. The only problem was resisting the temptation to eat the decorations.
Starsky was delighted to spend his entire day off buying decorations, hauling the giant tree home in a pick-up borrowed from one of the guys at the precinct, and hanging decorations. They ate pizza as they worked, not stopping for an official meal, and Christmas music pumped cheerfully through stereo speakers in the corner of the living room.
“I’m gonna plug in the lights. Tell me where the gaps are, okay?” Starsky crawled under the tree and plugged in the network of lights.
“Lower left middle,” Hutch commented, taking in the sight before him. The tree was a giant among in-house Christmas trees, and thanks to Starsky’s incessant whining, they had bought an adequate number of lights. The decorations were a little…eclectic, but watching Starsky painstakingly adjust the lights in exactly the spot Hutch had meant, he felt an overpowering rush of all the warm, happy feelings of Christmas.
“How’s that?” Starsky crawled on his knees out of the way, remaining in the lowered position in case he had more work to do. If he’d had a better Christmas with his Aunt and Uncle, he couldn’t remember it.
“Looks perfect. Really perfect.”
“All right!” Starsky straightened to stand and backed up to stand with Hutch, evaluating the tree. “Next year, we buy some decent ornaments.”
“There’s nothing wrong with our ornaments.”
“Hutch, we’ve got some old stuff from the attic, some old stuff of yours from a table tree in your apartment last year, and a few K-Mart specials.”
“And a hell of a lot of candy canes,” Hutch observed, chuckling a little. Starsky maintained his serious expression for only moments, and then smiled back at him.
“We don’t have a topper!”
“Didn’t Harry have something upstairs?”
“He had some ratty old angel that looked like one of the bag ladies who live behind the Gospel Mission, but nothin’ that’s fit for the top of that tree.”
“We could probably make something,” Hutch suggested, looking at the painfully naked point of the tree top.
“Make something,” Starsky stated, as if it were the most absurd concept he’d ever heard.
“Yes, make something. You know, a tin foil star or—”
“There ain’t no way in hell any tin foil star’s goin’ on top’a that tree!”
“There ain’t no way in hell I’m paying out another $20 for a tree topper.”
“What good is it with nothin’ on top? It ruins the whole thing!”
“Oh, Starsky, grow up. We’ve got enough other stuff on it—”
“It’s not the same thing. I’m gonna go look for one.” He strode to the entry hall, grabbed his jacket out of the closet at shrugged into it.
“All right already.” Hutch grabbed his own coat and followed Starsky through to the side exit, which was closest to the car. Both paused on their respective sides of the Torino when they noticed an unfamiliar white Sedan deVille pull into the end of the driveway, carrying two occupants.
“What d’you suppose this is?” Starsky queried. The people in the other car got out and headed toward them. It was dark, but they could see by the streetlights that it was a man and a woman.
“My parents!” Hutch stated, shocked. He started down the driveway, followed by Starsky. Marion Hutchinson reached her son first and hugged him excitedly. John Hutchinson was close behind, and a flurry of hand-shaking, hugging and back-slapping ensued. Starsky was stunned to see the couple, having been certain they were a lost issue. Now, on the 19th of December, here they were.
“David!” Marion lunged for Starsky, giving him the standard motherly death-grip hug. “You look wonderful!” she exclaimed, standing back. Then he remembered she hadn’t seen him since almost two years before he’d been shot. She had probably heard the worried ramblings of her son on how bad he looked ever since it happened.
“You’re still beautiful as ever,” Starsky replied, kissing her hand.
“Still a ladykiller too, I see,” she responded, blushing a little.
“My God, this is quite a place you have here,” John commented, shaking hands with Starsky and taking in the view of the house. “I pictured this as a shabby little fixer-upper!” John was a tall man, with receding gray hair and only a passing resemblance to Hutch, mostly in his height and build. The blue-eyed blonde Marion, with her perfect features and soft voice was obviously the parent who had contributed the most to Hutch’s appearance and personality.
“I thought you weren’t able to come,” Hutch finally said.
“I gave Sally a crash course in party-planning and told her she was on her own. If I’m going to plan the whole thing anyway, I might as well have given it myself again this year. Besides—we were long overdue for a visit, and I wanted to see the new house.” She linked her arm through Hutch’s. “I hope this isn’t going to mess up your plans now.”
“Not at all,” he responded, smiling widely.
“I’ll give you a hand with the luggage, John.” Starsky started pulling suitcases out of the large car’s trunk, and John grabbed the last of it and closed the trunk. Hutch’s mother had taken complete possession of him, and he finally accepted that and left the luggage to the others while he walked up to the house’s front door with his mother clinging to his arm, chattering incessantly about the house and the neighborhood. Wait ’til she meets the Nazis who live behind us…
“Oh, Ken, it’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, approaching the majestic, pine-laden staircase and caressing the polished wood. “And those French doors!” Hutch pushed them open for her to walk into the living room. He quickly switched on a lamp. Both John and Marion were noticeably impressed with the high ceilings, original woodwork and vintage furnishings.
“The previous owners sold it with most of the furniture still here. It was in an estate,” Hutch explained.
“You can get some wonderful deals when people want to unload a place,” John commented. Starsky had crawled under the tree and plugged in the lights.
“We’ve gotta put the topper on it yet, and it’s kind of—what was that word you called it earlier?” He turned to Hutch.
“Eclectic.”
“Yeah. Eclectic.”
“It sure is a big one,” John remarked approvingly.
“Let’s get you settled in the guest room,” Hutch offered, heading back toward the abandoned luggage. “This is really a great surprise.”
“I’m glad. We were worried that maybe our invitation had expired,” Marion said, happily following her son up the main staircase toward the guest room. John remained on the first floor, admiring the architecture of the old house.
“Ken mentioned to Marion something about some damage you had done here a few months back. Sure wouldn’t know to look at it.”
“Does the stairway look genuine to you?” Starsky asked honestly.
“Genuine? What—? That isn’t the original?” he asked, apparently genuinely surprised. That brought a wide smile from Starsky.
“That’s what I needed to know,” he responded. “This whole banister was just redone. The whole thing was smashed up.”
“I heard you got a little smashed up with it,” John commented, examining the wood more closely, shaking his head in obvious approval at the replica.
“I was in the hospital a couple of days. Nothing life-threatening.” Starsky didn’t care to go into the gory details, and John didn’t pursue it.
“Well, I’m glad things have leveled out a bit now. I guess we should go investigate that guest room.” He started up the stairs, and Starsky followed. If only things had leveled out…
“…close to the bathroom. Starsky and I can use the one downstairs while you’re here, so we won’t get a line-up in the morning.” Hutch was explaining the accommodations to his mother as his father and Starsky arrived.
“The upstairs still needs decorating, so you’ll probably find the room a little plain,” Starsky began. “We tore up a lot of old carpeting and we’ve been using the hardwood floors in the meantime.”
“In a way it would be a shame to cover these,” Marion commented, more closely inspecting the floor. “Your grandmother never would lay carpeting over her floors—she used some area rugs, but no carpeting,” Marion continued.
“Have you eaten yet?” Hutch inquired. It was near eight o’clock.
“We ate on the plane,” John replied.
“God help you,” Starsky retorted. “So, you wanna go out and get something decent?”
“We’re fine, really, David,” Marion responded. “I think we’d just like to get settled in for tonight. Are you two sure this isn’t going to be an imposition?”
“Not at all,” Starsky spoke up, and Hutch just smiled his agreement. “Besides, maybe you can convince your son that we need a decent topper for that man eater of a Christmas tree downstairs.”
“Ken, you have to have something significant on top of a tree that size!” Marion exclaimed, as if it were a decorator’s law he was thinking of violating.
“There, ya see?” Starsky turned to Hutch.
“Thanks a lot, Mom,” Hutch grumbled.
“Is that where you two were headed when we got here?” she asked.
“Yup, except he was tryin’ to talk me into makin’ one.”
“That might have worked on one of those scrawny little trees your grandparents used to get, but it most certainly isn’t appropriate for a tree like that one—or a house like this. Would you mind a little company to pick it out?”
“I think that’s a great idea!” Starsky responded, knowing that Hutch’s mother was the best weapon against her frugal son.
“Why don’t you stay and get us settled, dear?” she asked John. “You and Ken can have a visit while David and I pick out an appropriate topper for that tree.”
“He’s all yours,” Hutch replied, laughing at the thought of turning Starsky loose in a store full of Christmas decorations with his mother’s lust for shopping and considerable bank account behind him.
Marion was quiet for the first few moments of their ride toward the discount store. When she spoke up, there was a trace of concern in her voice.
“Ken looks pale. Is anything wrong?”
“It’s been a rough time for him since Sandra died. The Evan Jordan case was a real roller coaster ride.”
“It wasn’t my choice to miss her funeral,” Marion stated quietly. “John was in the middle of a deal on a thoroughbred, and he seemed to feel that Ken wouldn’t miss us that much…”
“He missed you. I mean, he wasn’t alone or anything. We have a lot of great friends, so he made it all right.”
“And he has you.”
“He’s always got me. That’s never gonna change.”
“I’m glad. I hate that Ken is still on the force. I’ve hoped and prayed he’d quit, do something—anything else. It’s so dangerous. But at least I’ve always known you were there to look out for him.”
“That goes both ways. I wouldn’t trust anybody but Hutch to watch my back either.”
“But it’s a much different feeling to know that your son is backed up by someone who would lay down his own life for him. Not every cop on the force has that kind of protection.” She was quiet a moment, and Starsky had no response. He was a little embarrassed at being praised for protecting Hutch’s life, which he did as much for his own selfish reasons of wanting to hold onto his best friend as he did for the altruistic purpose of letting Hutch live in his place if it came down to that choice. And I sure as hell would rather be the one who goes first… “I suppose I’m struggling to say thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I get my thanks every single day, one way or another,” he replied, grinning at her. “Besides, Hutch would do the same for me.”
“You aren’t seriously going in here to pick out the topper for the tree!” Marion exclaimed as they pulled into the discount store parking lot.
“Well, yeah, I mean…well, we’re not exactly…it has to be…reasonable.”
“Isn’t there something a bit more…upscale still open?”
“Well…there’s the lawn and garden place not far from here that’s got all Christmas stuff set up now, but I can’t afford—”
“Nonsense! That’s where we’re going.” She waited as the Torino didn’t move from its parking spot. “Go on!”
* * * *
“So how about the grand tour?” John asked Hutch after his wife had left with Starsky.
“Sure. We might as well start up here and then go back downstairs.” Hutch walked him through the rooms, pointing out a few features here and there. John wandered on his own into Starsky’s room, which Hutch hadn’t really intended to take him through without his partner being there.
“Nice view of the yard and neighborhood from back here, too.” He pulled back a panel of the well-worn beige drapes that still hung in the window from the previous owners. “Don’t see those stone walls too often anymore,” he commented on the barrier between the Cherry Street and Mulberry Street backyards.
“Starsky’s got some big plans for the garden, so he wanted the bedroom overlooking it.”
“Your mother will go nuts when she sees this furniture. She’s getting into the whole antique thing now—gives her something else to shop for,” he added, laughing a little. “This Dave’s father?” He noted the framed photo of Mike Starsky in his dress blues on the wall of the room as he was about to re-join Hutch in the hall.
“Yes it is,” Hutch responded.
“He died quite a long time ago, didn’t he?”
“He was shot when Starsky was ten.”
“Must be one of his commendations or something here,” John observed at spotting the plaque for Hutch’s high school essay victory. Dumb of me to think he’d recognize it, Hutch chided himself as his father took a pair of wire-framed glasses out of his jacket pocket to more closely examine the plaque. “Oh my goodness, that looks familiar,” he said with a chuckle. “How’d he end up with it in here?” John joined Hutch in the hallway and they started back toward the stairs to tour the first floor.
“He thought it was a pretty big deal that I placed number two in something national, and since he was the only one who ever did, I figured he might want it. He did.” Hutch knew the answer sounded a little more bitter than it should have, but he also took a certain pride in showing his father that someone valued his accomplishment enough to display the award in a place of honor.
“That was certainly a nice honor, Ken. Your mother and I were proud of that.”
“Yeah, I could tell, the way you clamored for the plaque.” Hutch started down the stairs. “I think the builder did a pretty good job reproducing the staircase. It was totaled before, and—”
“What was that last remark supposed to mean exactly?” John had stopped on the landing, and Hutch paused two steps further down to turn and face him. Just about the height difference he’s comfortable with. Just like I’m ten again.
“It means that you didn’t give a damn about it because it wasn’t the first place trophy and we didn’t end up going to the White House. Besides, second place doesn’t exist—no one remembers the contestant who almost won, right Dad?”
“If you’d spent a little less time running around with Jack Mitchell and a little more time on your work, it probably would have been number one.” Okay, Dad, you can play dirty too. Congratulations.
“If I hadn’t ended up valedictorian, I might have to back down from that, but I don’t have to make any excuses to you about my academic performance.”
“And do you think for one minute you’d have racked up that honor if your mother and I hadn’t impressed on you the importance of being your best?”
“What is so important about being number one, huh? I’m still trying to figure that out. Maybe I had to get out on my own and get a taste of the real world before I could see how little that really means in the big picture of things.”
“Now you listen to me. If I hadn’t had ambition and drive and hadn’t seen the importance in being number one, you wouldn’t have enjoyed some of the perks you had. You’d’a been shovelin’ horse manure out of the stables after school instead of going out riding while the ranch hands did it!” he bellowed.
“How many times did I go out riding after school, huh? I was chained to a desk in my room making myself number one, remember? No going out until the homework’s done? Ring any bells? If I got a ‘B’ on something, you didn’t say ‘nice job,’ you said ‘what happened?'”
“Damn right I did because I knew you were capable of the ‘A’.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why we’re having this ridiculous argument. You’re an adult now, and if you choose to throw away your life, there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“You’re 36 years old and you’re still playing cops and robbers. When are you going to use that brain God gave you and try for a promotion? Or better yet, go back to college. You could get your law degree—”
“What for? So you could have better bragging rights? Your son the lawyer. Your son the Police Commissioner? Sounds a lot better than your son the street cop, doesn’t it?”
“It’s unfathomable to me why you want to spend the rest of your life mingling with the scum of the earth.”
“It’s the scum we’re trying to clean up. We’re not mingling with them.”
“I can understand Dave staying on the force. With his background and no education, he probably doesn’t have many options—”
“Hold it right there. Don’t start putting Starsky down. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not saying he isn’t a good person, but as long as you stay hooked up with him, you’re going to be held back. You have this sentimental attachment to him that keeps you from realizing your potential. He’s going to keep you from achieving anything worthwhile—”
“John?” Marion’s voice interrupted them, which, Hutch thought sadly, meant that Starsky wasn’t far behind her—and probably within easy earshot. “What’s going on here?”
“Where’s Starsky?” Hutch asked immediately.
“Right here,” a quiet response came from behind Marion. “I’ll go hook this up,” he said, forcing a little smile at Marion as he carried a very elaborate-looking gold-accented star with multi-colored lights in the points into the living room.
“What on earth—I leave you two alone for a few minutes and already—John, how could you?” She moved swiftly up the stairs, and her husband obviously picked up on the fact he had some fast and fancy talking to do to get back in her good graces. He followed her up to the guest room. Hutch was left there on the stairs, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. He could go upstairs and listen to his parents bickering or he could go down to the living room and face the hurt in Starsky’s eyes that would try to hide behind a facade of nonchalance and understanding. He chose the latter.
“You and my mother came up with a good one, I see,” Hutch said lightly as he entered the living room. There wasn’t much point in hoping that Starsky hadn’t overheard what his father said, but he decided to act as if it had meant nothing to him. The argument wasn’t pleasant, but his father’s assessment of Starsky’s value in his life really didn’t mean anything to him.
“She insisted on buying it.” Starsky’s tone was lackluster as he plugged it into an outlet. “It works. That’s good.” He unplugged it again and laid it on a cushion of the couch.
“Starsk, I hope you didn’t put any stock in anything my father said—”
“He’s got a right to his opinion,” Starsky responded, looking back at the tree. “I think I’ll turn in early. Give you and your folks some time to visit.”
“Starsky, you know—”
“You don’t have to explain anything. I’ll see ya tomorrow.” Starsky smiled slightly and then walked back through the dining room, and soon, Hutch heard his footsteps on the back stairs.
Hutch waited in the living room a few minutes, then began dowsing the lights. It was only nine o’clock, but it was obvious that a cheerful night of interaction wasn’t about to happen. If it did, it could happen in the library.
The last person he wanted to run into in the upstairs hall, he did. His father was pacing around near the guest room, the door to which was closed.
“Your mother’s pretty upset,” he said to Hutch, trying to keep his tone light, almost conspiratorial, as if they were both responsible for that situation.
“I’m not surprised. I’m going to turn in.”
“It’s nine o’clock, son. You haven’t started going to bed earlier than you did when you were six years old, have you?”
“Probably just another one of my character flaws,” he shot back, heading for his room.
“Look, I’m sorry if I upset you with what I said, but you have to know that your mother and I only want what’s best for you—”
“Let me tell you what’s best for me. The best thing that ever happened to me was meeting up with Starsky and having him for a partner and my best friend. He’s been there for me more times than I could count, and if being a success meant terminating our partnership, or God forbid, our friendship, then I’m happy being your definition of a failure.”
“I never said you were a failure, Ken. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“But I’m not a success, either, in your eyes.” Hutch took a deep breath. “There’s really no point in having these arguments, and now that I’m an adult, I can see how pointless they always were. We don’t define success the same way, Dad. To you it’s money, position, acquiring a new thoroughbred—and I’m not condemning you for that. That’s what means something to you.
“By your standards, Starsky and I are failures. We’re wasting our lives. Even if Starsky goes back to school and gets his degree, which he’s planning to do, he won’t use it to seek out the kind of success you’re talking about. He’d put it to use on the job, or he’d do something that somehow made the world a better place. Because he’s got a heart that’s so generous he can’t not give to others. As for me…yeah, I could have split off our partnership, driven my way to a ‘better’ job.” He paused, then continued. “For what? More money? A big office? A title?”
“Those aren’t things to be scoffed at, Ken. Money, position—it’s easy to cast aspersions at that when you’re young and idealistic and have your whole life ahead of you. But when you reach a certain age, you begin to bring into focus what’s really important.”
“Nearly dying a couple of times has brought that into a real clear focus. Seeing Starsky lying in a pool of blood on the ground after being riddled with bullets in the police garage brought it into focus. I know what’s important to me, and I’m being true to that. It would be nice if you could understand that and respect it.”
“But that’s my point—you’ve faced death more than once on this job, and if you’re blown away by some junkie in a dirty back alley somewhere, it would be a huge waste of a fine human being.”
“And if I spent the rest of my life unhappy, that would be a waste, too.” Hutch took a deep breath and rubbed his face with his hand, bringing it to rest on his chin momentarily. “I’m done apologizing for and justifying my life. It is what it is, it’s what I’ve chosen, and I hope you can respect that as one adult to another. The fact I’m a failure by your definition isn’t your fault. And it sure as hell isn’t something you should blame on Starsky. To be brutally honest with you, I feel like the richest man in the world right about now, because all the things I have…they’re all I need to make me happy. At this moment, right now, I’m not missing anything I need to be my definition of successful.”
“Then perhaps you need to rethink your definitions.”
“Maybe you need to rethink yours,” Hutch shot back, surprising himself almost more than his father. He strode into his room and slammed the door.
John Hutchinson stood in the hall a moment, a little stunned at the exchange, then returned to the guest room.
* * * *
Hutch wandered down the hall toward Starsky’s room. It was almost two in the morning, and he had pursued sleep unsuccessfully for nearly three hours. The door was shut tight, making a silent peek inside to see if his partner was sleeping almost impossible. One of the door hinges creaked, and if there was one thing that startled Starsky these days, it was the sound of someone sneaking into his room. Ever since Mercer, that sick S.O.B., Hutch thought. He tapped lightly on the door. Thinking he heard a whispered response, he pushed it open slightly and found Starsky lying on his side, facing the door.
“What’s the matter?” He pushed himself up slightly.
“Nothing. Couldn’t sleep. Did I wake you?”
“No. I was awake.”
“Mind if I come in?”
“‘Course not.” Starsky pulled himself up into a sitting position, and Hutch perched on the edge of the bed, near the foot of it.
“I’m sorry about what you overheard earlier. It’s very important to me that you know that anything my father said was his opinion—not mine.”
“I know that. I also overheard what you told him out in the hall later.” Starsky smiled a little in the darkness.
“I meant that, Starsk.”
“I know you did. But your dad might be right—about me holdin’ you back. I mean, you could really go to the top if you didn’t have me holdin’ you down. If you weren’t trying to stay partners with me.”
“How do I explain…make you see…” Hutch seemed to be genuinely struggling for the right words. “You couldn’t ever hold me down, buddy…as far as I’m concerned, Starsk, my dad’s the visitor here—but you’re the home team.”
“Don’t make things hot with your dad because of this, okay? I mean, I know how you feel about it, and I understand if things get a little ugly from time to time. But if you guys are gonna have any kind of relationship, you’re gonna have to accept him to some extent the way he is.”
“I will accept the way he is—to a point. When he starts insulting you and telling me how to restructure my life, I won’t accept that. He can meet me halfway.”
“I sure hope so, buddy.” Starsky widened his eyes with an inspiration. “Why don’t you call Cecile and see if you can set somethin’ up for you guys to go out with your folks?”
“I’m not going to start excluding you from this visit because of what my father said.”
“You’re not excluding me. I live here. Besides, I’m about due to set something up with Christine, anyway. Give them a normal evening out with their son and his girlfriend, and keep it light. Maybe your dad’ll quit raggin’ on your life and maybe you won’t have reason to get so defensive with him.”
“Starsk, I’m not going to put on a puppet show for my father. Yeah, I would like them to meet Cecile, and I might do just what you’re suggesting. But I’m not going to start behaving differently or pretending to care about things I couldn’t give a damn less about just to make him happy. I had to do that when I was a kid, but not anymore.”
“I’m not tryin’ to tell you what to do. I’d just like to see this visit work out okay.”
“I know that. I’ll give it my best shot, but I don’t want you to ever wonder where I stand when he starts his soliloquy on where my career ought to be right now. I’m right where I wanna be. Got that?”
“I got it,” Starsky responded, smiling slightly.
“I better turn in. Early call in the morning.”
“What’re we gonna do with them all day while we’re at work?”
“I guess they’ll have to take in some of the exciting sights of LA or Hollywood or something. But I’ll check out the dinner idea with Cecile tomorrow.”
“Okay. See you in the morning.” Starsky slid down into position to work at sleeping again.
“Starsk?” Hutch paused at the door of the room.
“What?”
“I…uh…just remember what I said, okay?”
“I will. Don’t worry about your dad, Hutch. We’ll get along okay while he’s here. And I had a real nice visit with your mom tonight.”
“Good. ‘Night, pal.”
“Sleep tight,” Starsky replied, already muffled by the pillows in which his face was half-buried.
* * * *
Hutch was up early enough in the morning to prepare breakfast for his parents. Starsky barely flew down the stairs at the last minute to scout the remains, running right to the wire for time as usual. Marion had an itinerary worthy of a Hollywood tour guide, which included making the drive to Beverly Hills so she could drag John around Rodeo Drive. Hutch snickered a little sadistically, thinking of what a master his mother really was at making his father pay for his transgressions. She had been bitterly unhappy that her husband was already picking fights with their son, so it was obvious she had decided he could make it up to her by following her through over-priced boutiques and smiling while she flashed her credit cards.
John seemed uneasy at the lack of any repercussions of the argument. Hutch was civil, if not completely friendly, and Starsky bounced through the kitchen with his usual cheery greetings, and after shoving some bacon and a couple of jelly-drowned pieces of toast in his mouth, was prodding Hutch to put a nickel in it.
The search for Arnold Mercer was becoming more and more discouraging. No new leads had materialized, and increasing emphasis was being put on a nationwide search. It was unlikely he was still in the area, now that he was the prime suspect in the murder of Kelli Thompson.
Starsky continued to feel uneasy, as if Mercer was never too far away, but he said nothing to Hutch about it. It was just an irrational leftover of his ordeal, and there was no point in trying to make it part of their case strategy.
A dinner out with Cecile, Hutch, and the elder Hutchinsons did take place that evening, and though it was pleasant enough, Hutch couldn’t shake the feeling that he was putting on the puppet show for his father he swore he wouldn’t.
Conversation seemed to flow easily between Cecile and John, who entered into an investment discussion that bounced back and forth like a lively round of ping pong. She was able to offer some helpful suggestions to him regarding the world of rental properties as investments, and he was, in turn, counseling her on the best strategies in the stock market. Marion had a plastic smile permanently glued to her face, seemingly used to having John spiral off on tirades about business or high finance in the middle of social occasions.
Cecile was little better in that department. She might have an artsy side, but she also had the characteristics of a business viper. A healthy discussion about making money piqued her interest as much as an ethereal discussion of modern art.
The two couples did manage to break free of the “shop talk” long enough to do a little dancing to the old standards being played in the sedate but expensive restaurant that had been chosen for the evening. While dancing with his mother, Hutch enjoyed one of the few, though brief, interesting conversations of the evening.
“Cecile seems like a nice girl,” she commented. “Very pretty.”
“She is that.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“I guess I don’t. Maybe I’m not. Starsky’s convinced she’s perfect for me.”
“David isn’t dating her, Ken. She has to make you happy.”
“I know that. She ought to, I s’pose.”
“Maybe it’s too soon,” she suggested gently.
“I think so. I think Starsky just wants to do something to make this whole thing…not as bad as it is—by finding me a replacement. He knows better than anyone else that it doesn’t work that way. After four years, he’s still looking.”
“He might always be looking. Sometimes there is one right person…I have a friend who lost her husband when she was only 25, and she never has remarried—and she’s had offers.”
“So he’s shopping for one for me instead, I guess.” Hutch laughed a little.
“He can’t stand seeing you anything but happy. I don’t think I need to tell you that.”
“No, you don’t. I feel the same way where he’s concerned. I hate all the lousy things he’s had to live through in the last several years…Terry, the shooting…he sure deserved better.”
“How is he now? He seems like the old David I remember from your visit to the ranch a few years back.”
“To a large extent, he is. I think he’s a little more serious…and I know there are a few physical effects left over, though he’s back up to speed on the streets, no question about that. He’s quieter, thinks more…dying does that to a person I guess.”
“Dying?” Marion looked shocked. Hutch remembered then that he’d never gone into the specifics with her about Starsky’s ordeal. Just that he’d been shot, taken months to fully rehabilitate, and most importantly—that he survived.
“He went into a cardiac arrest not long after the surgical repair work was done. They lost him briefly—he had to be resuscitated.”
“My God. I had no idea. I knew it was bad—that night you called me, you sounded so hopeless.”
“He had survived the cardiac arrest, but there was some doubt as to whether he’d go into another one, or if he’d regain consciousness at all…”
“No wonder he’s so important to you now. Moreso than before, even.”
“You’re right about that.” Hutch smiled down at his mother. She was a pretty perceptive lady, and when she wasn’t loyally standing at his father’s side, she could be a good friend.
“Don’t rush yourself with Cecile, dear. If it’s right, it’ll fall into place.”
“I know. Thanks, Mom.”
“For what?” she asked as the music ended and they were walking back toward the table.
“I don’t know. For coming, I guess.”
“My pleasure, honey.” She squeezed the hand she was still holding before he released his grip to hold the chair for her.
* * * *
Starsky stirred a bit in his sleep. Something was moving around the room, stealthily. Hutch and his parents had gotten home already…he’d heard them come in, even though he was partially asleep at the time. Busy on a stakeout with Grant Shemanski, Christine had taken a raincheck on dinner, but Starsky had declined joining the Hutchinson clambake with a polite excuse about having a date anyway. He felt the time together would do them all good, and give them an opportunity to get to know Cecile.
So who was creeping around the room? It’s not Hutch…I know his sounds…could be Marion or John, but why? He fought the urge to roll over and look behind him. If it was an intruder, his best bet was to listen for what seemed like the right time to venture open an eye, maybe carefully get a hold of his gun, which should be on the lower shelf of the ornate antique night stand, inside what looked like an innocent jewelry or trinket box.
Something pounced on the bed, pinning his body beneath spread knees, and cold metal was at his temple.
“Miss me, Jew boy? We’ve got a little unfinished business together,” Mercer’s voice whispered in his ear. “Don’t make a sound. Listen. Hear the silence? I’ve got your gun, and I’ve got your partner’s. You feel this?” He ran what felt like a gun with a silencer attached along Starsky’s cheek. “Give me trouble, and I’ll put a bullet in your head—your partner won’t ever hear it—then I’ll go down the hall and visit the folks. You know, for an old lady, his mother’s a pretty hot little blonde.”
“You son of a—”
“Ah-ah!” Mercer leaned in close enough for Starsky to smell his breath. No liquor…no pot…damn—that means he’s alert, in top form… “Don’t get sassy with me, pig. I’m gonna teach you a lesson about that, and good. And you’re going to lie here and take it, and keep your mouth shut, understood?” Starsky made no response. The safety on Mercer’s gun was released, and the silencer pressed under Starsky’s chin. “You answer me when I ask you a question! Understood?“
“Yes,” Starsky hissed at him through clenched teeth. If what Mercer said was true, and he had the firepower, he could very easily kill one person in one room of the house with the silencer, and then go finish off the others. He had to play along until he was sure he could overpower him or trick him somehow.
“Now, this is gonna be real nice, right here in this big bed. Lot less clothes to mess around with too. Tell me you want it. You know you do,” Mercer almost purred in Starsky’s ear. His question was met with silence again.
Provoke him to violence short of shooting you…he’ll get mad, make noise…
“I told you to answer me!” He brought the hand with the gun in it back hard across Starsky’s face, hitting his jaw with most of the weight of the weapon. “Now, I said, tell me you want it!” The voice was a hoarse, breathy whisper—getting louder. Starsky shook his head in response to the order.
Besides, unless Mercer’s figured out a really new way to do it, he’s gonna have to quit sitting on my stomach eventually and move…
“One more time: tell me you want it!” His voice was well above a whisper now, raspy and low, but still louder than it should be.
Dear God, Hutch, just hear him…notice your gun missing…go get the shotgun out of the Torino…
Starsky felt another heavy blow he hadn’t seen coming across the other side of his face. There was blood in his mouth already from the first blow, and he aborted his plan to spit it in Mercer’s face. There was a point at which the other man would probably kill him, and that just might be it.
“Goddammit, I said, tell me you want it!”
Hutch, where the hell are you?! God, please, don’t make me have to lie here and take this anymore…
“That’s fine. I’ll just make sure it’s a lot rougher than it has to be, if that’s how you want it. Maybe that’s what turns you on, eh, Jew-boy?”
A crashing sound from behind made Mercer spin around, just in time to see Hutch in the doorway, shotgun aimed at him.
“Drop it! Throw it on the floor where I can see it! Right now!”
Mercer hesitated, and then decided to turn back toward Starsky, hoping to use aiming the gun at him as a means of escape. In one powerful move, the man pinned beneath him thrust upward and grabbed hold of the wrist holding the weapon, propelling both men off the bed onto the floor. Hutch flipped on the overhead light, needing to see who was where in the tangle of limbs writhing on the floor.
“Give it up, Mercer!” Starsky growled, finally pinning the other man beneath him, aiming the gun at his face. Mercer was still as a statue, not sure what the wild-eyed cop straddling him would do now that the roles were reversed. “I wanna hear you beg for your life, asshole! Come on!” He pointed the weapon even more purposefully. “Beg me not to kill you!”
“Ken?” Marion’s soft inquiry distracted Hutch, but more importantly, distracted Starsky. Mercer got a hold of Starsky’s wrists as he held the weapon and shoved him back, sending two shots into the ceiling. Hutch had to be concerned with pushing his mother into a nearby bedroom and slamming the door, while Starsky wrestled with Mercer.
Another shot was fired, and then glass shattered. Hutch raced back to Starsky’s room to find his partner scrambling to his feet, carelessly pulling a robe over his underwear and running toward the door. He almost knocked Hutch over on the way out.
“The crazy bastard jumped out the window—and kept moving!” His voice was high with surprise as he flew down the hall, not seeming to notice he was unarmed and undressed.
“Starsky!” Hutch ran after him, carrying the shotgun, which was their only ungainly means of defense at the moment.
“Ken! Dave! What’s going on?” John was demanding from somewhere down the hall, but Hutch didn’t have time to care. He raced down the steps following Starsky’s path, which ultimately led to the Torino. A dark sedan was squealing away from the curb out front, and Starsky wasn’t about to let it get out of his sight. As the car catapulted down the driveway, it only slowed marginally so Hutch could throw in the shotgun and then jump head first through the passenger window. It had been a couple years since Hutch had tried that maneuver, and he was grateful to end up torso-first in the Torino instead of pasted to the side of it. Dressed in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, he cast a glance at his robe-clad partner as he piloted the car onto the road, starting up the siren. Hutch slapped the mars light on the roof and held on for dear life.
“Zebra Three to Control…we are in pursuit of a dark sedan, possibly a Buick Electra, mid-70s, northbound on Cherry Street. Driver of the sedan is Arnold Mercer, escaped convict wanted in connection with another homicide. Should be considered armed and dangerous,” Hutch concluded the call.
“Roger, Zebra Three.” Within moments, a call began to summon all units to join in the effort of intercepting Mercer.
“Shit.” Starsky’s terse observation startled Hutch.
“What?”
“We’re gonna bust this guy in our underwear. She just called all units! You know how many cop cars are gonna be in on this?”
“You’re the one who ran outside this way!”
“He was gettin’ away!”
“He still is, Ace. You wanna put a nickel in it?”
“I’ll drive—you ride shotgun,” Starsky quipped back, pushing the Torino to its limits, careening through what were, thankfully, essentially empty residential streets.
“This is Zebra Five. We’re gonna intercept at Cherry and Morley.”
“Nedloe and Elliot. This is just perfect,” Starsky continued to grumble.
The brake lights went on ahead of them, the dark car spinning somewhat out of control but attempting to dart off down Morley in the opposite direction from Nedloe and Elliot’s approach. It was cut off by an arriving black and white, each car hitting brakes and skidding sideways, hoping vainly to avoid each other. There was a sickening crunch of metal as the passenger sides of Mercer’s car and the squad car met.
Mercer was out the driver’s door like a shot, running for all he was worth across the lawn of the house on the corner, marginally slowed by a limp acquired in his jump from Starsky’s window. Starsky was out of the Torino and close behind him, bathrobe flying, with his underwear-clad, shotgun-armed partner on his heels. Mercer fired a couple of shots behind him, but he was running so fast that they were not carefully aimed. Starsky got up close, and grabbing the other man’s waist, made a fairly smooth tackle, straddling his back and pouncing on the hand that held the weapon. Mercer relinquished it quite quickly as he found himself looking up the barrel of the shotgun Hutch was holding.
“Anybody got a set’a cuffs?” Starsky called out, trying to maintain his dignity in front of Nedloe, Elliot, and a number of uniformed officers, as he sat astride his captive, adjusting the tie on his blue robe.
“Doin’ a little undercover work, you two?” Jim stepped forward, dangling the cuffs in front of Starsky with his thumb and forefinger. Starsky snatched them with a curl of his lip and cuffed Mercer.
“What’s the matter, Mercer? No snappy comebacks? No threats?” Starsky removed his weight from the man’s back and yanked him up on his feet. “You’re under arrest. For the murder of Kelli Thompson, not to mention escaping from prison—oh, and assaulting an officer. Does that cover it, Hutch?”
“For now. Read him his rights and get him out of here.” Hutch tried to look serious, handing out orders to the uniformed men as he stood in the middle of someone else’s backyard in his underwear.
“He broke into the house, got a hold of the guns somehow…” Starsky began explaining.
“Look, we wanna be in on any questioning of this nut case, but I think we might be a little more effective if we went home and, uh, got changed,” Hutch said to Jim. Jack was just approaching, having radioed in the status of he situation to the dispatcher.
“This is really great. Have a pajama party and don’t invite me,” he quipped, snickering at the perturbed looks on the younger detectives’ faces.
“We’re going home to get some clothes. Meet you at the precinct.” Starsky wrapped up the exchange rather quickly, heading back for the Torino.
Both of the Hutchinsons could be seen peering out the living room window when their son and his partner pulled back into the driveway.
“Bet Sally never had anything this exciting happen when they spent Christmas with her.”
“You’re insane,” Hutch retorted, laughing at Starsky’s comment. “You’re also bleeding. You really did a number on your legs tackling Mercer. Face doesn’t look too great either.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re not anything special yourself.”
“I mean you’re a mess. My mother’s going to freak out when she sees you.”
“Wouldn’t be the first mother to freak out when she saw me. She’s tougher’n you think. She’ll deal with it.” Starsky led the way in through the side door, slipping up the back stairs and letting Hutch explain things to his parents, who hurried through the house to meet them.
“Ken! Are you all right? Where’s David?”
“We’re both okay, Mom. You guys better go up and get dressed. There’ll be lab guys here soon enough. I don’t think all that’ll take long, but we’ll have to have your statements on the record since you were in the house when it all happened.”
“You got him?” Marion asked.
“We got him. More specifically, Starsky made a flying tackle I think might qualify him for the Dallas Cowboys starting line-up next year.”
“I thought he was going to kill him before…in his room.”
“What’re you talking about?” John interjected.
“Starsky was just giving him a little dose of his own medicine. He wouldn’t have taken it any further.”
“I’d like someone to tell me what in the hell that was all about!” John demanded.
“That was one of the men who broke in here and attacked Starsky. He escaped prison, killed his girlfriend, and now this. I didn’t expect he’d be dumb enough to come back here, though I should have known. Listen, everything’s under control now. But if you want time to get dressed before the lab boys get here, you probably better do it now.”
“This is really wonderful,” John muttered as he made his way through the house toward the main staircase.
“I’m glad you two are all right.” Marion paused to hug Hutch quickly before she followed her husband.
* * * *
The lab people did arrive shortly, going over the scene in a somewhat perfunctory manner. The victims were alive and kicking this time, so they didn’t have to rely quite so heavily on the forensic evidence. Hutch’s parents only had brief statements to make, and Hutch noticed that Marion only commented on having seen that Starsky had overpowered Mercer and was distracted by her arrival at the scene. She never mentioned what she saw or heard regarding any vengeful utterances toward Mercer on Starsky’s part.
Starsky and Hutch, fully clothed this time, made their way down to headquarters to question Mercer. Kelli Thompson’s murder was their case, even though finding Mercer related to the prison break had been Nedloe and Elliot’s officially. Mercer found himself a human ping-pong ball between the four cops. This time, he insisted on having an attorney present, and was showing remarkable restraint by refusing to respond to any of the detectives’ attempts to bait him, not to mention refusing to answer any questions. Not feeling the need to plea bargain with him this time out, his silence was met with a certain level of resolute acceptance by the cops. The evidence would speak for itself, and knowing Mercer, the new and improved version wouldn’t last long. He’d hang himself soon enough.
Back in the squad room, Hutch took responsibility for typing up most of the reports. Starsky would have to do his own about his time with Mercer, and he had essentially finished that now, laboriously correcting the final typo and preparing to put it on Dobey’s desk.
“Want some coffee?” Starsky offered as he went to the pot to pour himself a cup.
“Yeah. I don’t suppose we’ll get any sleep tonight before we go on,” Hutch remarked, checking his watch. The shattering of glass and Starsky’s little yelp startled Hutch out of his report-typing-induced haze. Starsky was standing there with the shattered coffee pot at his feet, still holding his cup in a hand obviously splashed by the hot coffee.
“What happened?” Hutch was at his side in a moment, and a few curious eyes were on them from a couple of detectives who had been silently working on their own reports in a back corner of the room. “Come on. That’s gonna blister if we don’t get some cold water on it.” Hutch encouraged him to move along down the hall to the men’s room. Once inside, he pulled Starsky’s wrist toward the faucet so the cold water could soothe the reddening skin on the back of his hand.
“Look at that!” Starsky pried his wrist loose of Hutch’s grip and held the other hand out at the same time. Both hands were shaking. “Damn it!” He held onto the edge of the sink.
“Get your hand back under the water, Starsk.” Hutch ignored the larger issue and shoved the burned hand back under the cold stream.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothin’ for you to apologize for, buddy.” Hutch put an arm around his partner’s shoulders. “Think it’s a little delayed reaction, huh?” he asked gently. Starsky just nodded. “That’s understandable, pal. But we got him this time.”
“Why does he still…get to me like that?” Starsky shuddered.
“I’ll tell you a secret, buddy. Seeing Forest’s goons, even after I was safe and okay and mostly recovered, shook the hell out of me.”
“But you were so cool about it. I’m a mess. I can’t even pick up a coffee pot.”
“Yeah, well, I had the excuse of the drug to be a shaky mess.” Hutch smiled a little as he turned off the water and grabbed a few towels to blot off the soggy hand.
“I’m just doin’ it all by myself.”
“I didn’t mean that. I could hide behind my ‘recovery’ to be messed up and scared and jumpy. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re doing just fine. So’s your hand. I don’t think it’ll blister.”
“It was like one of my nightmares, ya know? Wakin’ up, knowing somebody was there, and then all of a sudden, he was just…on me.”
“Did anything happen tonight, besides him slapping you around a little?” Hutch nodded to indicate the vivid bruising on Starsky’s face. One side of his mouth was badly swollen and there was an equally nasty abrasion on the opposite cheek near his eye.
“Just…his usual crap…lots of talk…threats and stuff.”
“Did you put it all in the report?” Hutch watched while Starsky looked down, then shook his head. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t wanna talk about it anymore!” he snapped back. “At least, not…with the whole damned precinct,” he added, more quietly this time. “I thought…for a few minutes there…that this was it, it was gonna happen. I would’ve rather he shot me in the head, but I thought about what he’d do after he got done with me—which was go visit you and your folks. I knew I had to do what he said no matter what because he had the guns, and there was a silencer on his, so you probably wouldn’t have even heard the shot—wouldn’ta had any warning. I didn’t wanna take a chance on tryin’ to struggle with him because if I lost, I was putting three more people on the line besides just me.”
“You’ve got a right to be a little shaky, buddy.”
“I thought that if…if worse came to worse…if he got what he came for, maybe he’d leave you and your folks alone. Or if I was lucky, he’d make a clumsy move and I could overpower him. But if I made any move, I had to be real sure of it.”
“You played it the only way you could. I heard him out in the hall—must have been after he left my room. I looked for the gun, but of course, it wasn’t there. I heard him go into your room, but I had to take the long way downstairs—down the hall past the guest room and down the main stairs. There’s that one little creak near your room and the really big one near the back stairs…so I figured I could sneak downstairs better using the main staircase. And I had to be quiet, because I didn’t want to wake my folks, and I couldn’t stop and start talking to them and warning them or he’d have heard me.”
“You came in right on cue, partner.”
“Yeah, but it took me a hell of a lot longer than I wanted it to.”
“Big thing is, we got through it, and he’s goin’ up for a long time.” Starsky flexed his hand. “Looks like I’ll live,” he commented, smiling a little.
“Mercer’s where he belongs, Jordan’s dead…from where I sit, it looks like we might both be able to live a little now,” Hutch said, smiling.
CHAPTER 16
Did you ever know that you’re my hero,
And everything I wish I could be?
I could fly higher than an eagle,
You are the wind beneath my wings.
Starsky stashed the last of the items under his bed, satisfied that he’d wrapped everything he bought, and remembered all his hiding places. While Hutch was less likely to go out in search of gifts, Starsky still wasn’t about to trust his resourceful partner in case curiosity overcame him. When he swung open his door, he was startled to see Marion on the other side of it.
“I was just about to knock.” She smiled a little uneasily.
“What can I do for ya?”
“I wanted your opinion on something I bought for Ken.”
“My opinion?”
“You know him so well, David. I’m just not sure.”
“Come on in.” He closed the door behind them, since Hutch and his father were around the house somewhere. “What is it?”
“I think he’s going to think it’s too extravagant.” She held out a square box which barely fit in her one hand. It had to be a watch. “I saw it on Rodeo Drive, and I loved it, and bought it, and then I got to thinking he probably will toss it in a drawer and mumble something about conspicuous consumption.”
“Have a seat.” Starsky took the box and gestured toward the overstuffed chair in the corner. Marion sat there while he sat on the foot of his bed and opened the box. A solid gold Rolex looked back at him. “That’s quite a watch,” he commented.
“He’s going to hate it, isn’t he?”
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“I want you to.”
“Go to the mall a few miles from here. There’s a nice store there called Kellerman’s. It’s like an upscale department store. Find a nice watch there, get it engraved and give it to him. Take this one back. Your instincts were right on.” He took one last look at the watch before closing the box. He envisioned pawning it and completing the house renovations. Dismissing such mercenary and Scrooge-like thoughts from his mind, he handed her the box back.
“I wanted him to have something really special.”
“Marion, the message you get engraved is going to mean everything to him. The piece of jewelry isn’t. As a matter of fact, he’s gonna get his back up when he opens something this showy. It’s beautiful, and I think he’s nuts, but that’s how he’s gonna react.”
“As if we’re buying him.”
“I guess. Hutch isn’t materialistic. I’m sure you know that.”
“I do. I am,” she confessed, smiling.
“Welcome to the club.”
“David, would you like to have this? I could see how much you liked it and—”
“No. Thanks, but I really couldn’t accept that.” He smiled. “Besides, you probably already have my present, right?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll stick with that one then, whatever it is.”
“Do you think you could take me over to Kellerman’s? I think John’s about had the course with shopping, and I don’t know my way around.”
“Sure. Wanna go now?”
“Well, it’s almost four, Christmas Eve Day. I think we probably should,” she replied. As she stood up, she seemed to really notice the furniture for the first time. “David! This bed is beautiful.”
“It came with the house. Isn’t it great? There’s even a set of steps for it.” He pulled those out from their daytime home against the wall near the headboard.
“This must be over 100 years old! And the dresser!”
“And the wardrobe…yeah, I went nuts over this stuff when I saw it. I mean, I could never afford to buy antiques like these. It’s amazing to me they left them.”
“Is this Terry?” Marion noticed the framed photo on the dresser.
“Yes. I took that photo about two weeks before she was shot.”
“She was beautiful.”
“I thought so.”
“That’s a nice photo of you and Ken, too.”
“That was taken about, oh, I guess five years ago now. That little snapshot tucked up there on the mirror is more recent.”
“Was that…right after…your shooting?”
“Yeah. Pretty obvious, huh?” Starsky squinted at the little 3×5 shot of himself sitting cross-legged in the sand with Hutch kneeling behind him, hands on his shoulders, wearing a huge, sappy grin. Starsky was almost the same color as the white t-shirt he was wearing in the photo, and the red shorts stood out in shocking contrast to the pale legs under them. He was about fifteen pounds thinner than he currently was, and the smile on his own face was faint. He remembered how happy Hutch had been to make their first venture out of Starsky’s apartment after his release from the hospital. They had taken a picnic lunch to the beach, and Hutch had found a stray tourist bearing a camera to come over and snap the picture.
“Ken called me the night after it happened. He was so devastated,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “He was saying things about not wanting to live if you didn’t. I told him you’d want him to go on, to be strong…I didn’t know what to tell him.”
“From what I hear, nobody really did. He was a little flipped out, just like I’d’ve been in his place.”
“Do you know what he told me?”
“No.”
“He said that my asking him to live on if you died was the same thing as cutting the wings off a butterfly and then asking it to go on living. I know he told me that in confidence, but I don’t believe in letting people die without knowing how important they are. He was almost destroying himself with the idea that you didn’t know.”
“We’d had a few rough spots that year. And we’d kind’ve gotten back on the right track again, on pretty good terms, when it happened. But I knew what it meant to him.” He was quiet a minute. “But thanks for telling me. That’s probably one of the most amazing ways of saying it that I ever heard.”
“I thought you should know,” she replied, smiling slightly. “Is that your father?” She noticed the uniformed man looking back at her from the photo on the wall.
“That’s him. That was taken about a year before he died, in his dress blues.”
“You look exactly like him!” She moved closer to look at the picture.
“So I’ve been told. Sometimes freaks out his old friends when they see me.”
“Wait a minute…I remember this…” She pointed to the plaque. “That was Ken’s award for that essay contest.”
“That’s the one.”
“How did you end up with it in here?”
“I just thought it was such an amazing thing, that he’d won something national…he didn’t seem to think it was real important, but I wanted him to know that it was. He’s so smart…really amazes me sometimes all the stuff he knows. ‘Course I can’t tell him that. His head’d get so big there wouldn’t be room for me in the car anymore.” Starsky laughed a little. “He asked me if I wanted it, and I did. So there it is.”
“I think that was probably the only time I ever considered leaving John.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ken worked so hard on that essay, and he was so excited about coming in second in the country. We had sweat out every level along the way, and he just kept clicking them off, winning each one. Then we hit the nationals, and when he got second place, we were elated. He went in to tell John—he was reading the newspaper in his study. Ken doesn’t get really worked up often, but he was that day. All excited. He told John what he’d won, and John just bent down one corner of the paper and smiled. He said, ‘Nice try, son. Maybe next year.’ I’ve never seen Ken look so crushed in my life.”
“For second place in a national contest?” Starsky asked, genuinely disbelieving.
“It was second place. John’s rationale was that if only first places were celebrated, Ken would never be satisfied with anything but the best. All the first place trophies and prizes were displayed downstairs. Anything less went up to Ken’s room.”
“And that was okay with you?”
“No, but it was John’s rule.” She shrugged and moved away from the wall with the award on it. “Until that day, I didn’t really feel it was important enough to fight with him about. He loves Ken very much, you have to understand that. He just wanted him to want the same things he did. Ken never did see eye to eye with his father on what was important.”
“I guess lots of fathers and sons don’t,” Starsky responded. “I was only ten when my dad died, so I don’t know if we’d have gotten along or not.”
“I’m glad you hung this up,” she said, nodding toward the plaque.
“Hey, we better go get that watch.”
“Right.” She walked through the door he opened for her and they headed out on their covert Christmas mission.
* * * *
The doorbell rang, startling John Hutchinson from the newspaper he was reading, seated on the couch in the living room. Hutch was somewhere upstairs, on the phone with someone from the precinct. Getting Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off hadn’t been easy for his son, but he was at least trying to make their visit pleasant. Of course, if he were in a normal line of work, he’d have days like this guaranteed off, John thought to himself as he approached the door.
“Special delivery for Ken Hutchinson,” a young delivery man announced. He was dressed in a plain blue uniform and cap, nothing notable.
“Thank you.” He accepted the manilla envelope and reached in his pocket for a tip.
“That’s been taken care of, sir.”
“Oh. All right then.”
“Merry Christmas, sir.” The young man nodded slightly and headed back for a small Volkswagon van parked out near the street at the end of the driveway.
John returned to the living room and tossed the envelope on the coffee table for Hutch. The end was not sealed, and a photograph slid most of the way onto the smooth surface of the wood. He was stunned at what he saw: a photo of his son, filthy and wild-eyed, apparently injecting himself with some kind of drug, judging by the rubber tie on his upper arm. There were others standing around in the picture, but the centerpiece of all of it was his son shooting up.
“Who was at the door, Dad?” Hutch was coming down the steps now, a little puzzled by the grim expression on his father’s face. “Dad? What is it?” He noticed the envelope immediately.
“What do you have to say about this?” He thrust the photo at Hutch as he entered the living room.
“Oh my God.” Hutch tried to keep thinking like a cop. Find out who delivered it. “Who gave you this?”
“Some delivery boy just came to the door with it.”
“From which service?”
“I don’t know—plain blue uniform, unmarked Volkswagon van.”
“Could you ID him again if—”
“Stop it!” John bellowed at his son. “Just stop it right now. For God’s sake, Ken, be man enough to face up to this! Don’t try to distract me by questioning me like a witness off the street!”
“I can explain this—”
“Then do it!” he snapped back angrily.
“It isn’t how it looks. I was—”
“Pictures don’t lie, son. I would hope that you don’t either. Now how about telling me the truth about this?”
“That’s what I’m trying to do here. I didn’t think you and Mom would ever have to hear about this, and—”
“So you just elected not to mention you spent some time as a dope fiend? No wonder you were out of touch for a few years.” John began pacing the room.
“I wasn’t a dope fiend—”
“Forgive me. I’ve forgotten the newest word for it. Hop-head? Speed Freak?”
“You don’t want me to explain this, do you? You just want to chew me out because you think you’ve finally got proof positive that I’m morally corrupt, a useless piece of garbage because I’m not doing what you think I oughtta be doing. Isn’t that about the size of it?”
“I see my son shooting dope into his arm. You’re obviously trying to tap-dance around the responsibility for this.”
“There is an explanation for all this, but at this point, it wouldn’t matter. You think whatever you like.” Hutch started for the door.
“There’s a note on the back. It says a copy went to somebody named Simonetti.”
“That makes it complete. Neither one of you give a rat’s ass about my side of this.” Hutch completed his trek to the front door, slamming it forcefully enough to dislodge the wreath hanging there. He stormed down the front steps and around the house to his car, and in his haste to swerve out of the driveway at full speed, managed to smash into the right front fender of the Torino, as Starsky hit the brakes to avoid the grey rusted missile shooting out of the property. To Starsky’s shock, Hutch only waited long enough for him to back up to disengage one car from the other before he continued his journey, leaving Starsky and Marion and the dented car in a state of shock by the edge of the driveway.
“Are you all right?” Starsky checked with Marion.
“Fine, I guess. What on earth—?”
“Go in the house. I’m goin’ after him.” He waited until she followed the directive and then hitting the siren and popping the mars light on the roof, took off in a squeal of tires.
Hutch ignored the sound of the siren behind him. If Starsky wanted to take his turn being an unreasonable asshole too, fine. He could just damn well chase the car then and make a little effort in pulling him over. He didn’t decrease his speed, and found a couple of sharp turns to take, figuring that would throw Starsky off, since he was a good distance away yet.
Starsky cursed under his breath as he saw no sign of his partner on the road ahead. He could have turned down any number of side streets, gone to any number of places. Cutting the siren, he retrieved the light from the roof of the car and slowed down to a more relaxed pace. Six o’clock Christmas Eve. Where the hell are you going, Hutchinson? Driving like a bat out of hell. And you hit my car with that rolling piece of scrap metal you drive! Damn it! Maybe if I find you, I’ll strangle you with my bare hands. Maybe I better see how bad the damage is.
Starsky pulled into the oversized lot of a grocery store. Parking in the last space, far from all the other cars, he got out to inspect the front passenger side fender. The headlight was missing, but that he figured from the lack of light on the road in front of him on that side. The hood was sprung, and the fender was crumpled enough that it would probably have to be replaced rather than bumped out. Muttering obscenities under his breath, Starsky got back in the car and tried to figure out where Hutch would go when he was in a world class snit. It wouldn’t be to Huggy’s, because Huggy would call him on acting weird. He didn’t seem to turn to Cecile when he was upset, so that left her out…
The beach near his old place.
Thinking that was the most perverse idea he’d had all night, Starsky started up the wounded Torino and headed for the beach near Venice Place.
* * * *
Hutch tossed another stone into the water. It was too cold to be out here without a jacket. It was only fifty degrees, and there was a stiff breeze coming in off the water. Should’ve stuck with it when you tossed your badge that time. Coming back in just cost Starsky a gut full of lead and now you the disgrace of being thrown off the force for past drug use. Simonetti is probably having a pre-crucifixion party around his Christmas tree right about now. Probably calling the house already, looking for the “dope fiend” cop. And Dad, thanks for your love and support, as always. Never did want to hear my side. On the rare times I disgraced you by getting into trouble, you never did either. You never hit me, but you never wanted to hear my side. “Face up to it like a man,” or, “At least don’t be a liar and a coward.”
It’s over. You’ve feared this moment for six years, and now it’s come and gone. Your father knows, Simonetti knows…now you can be fired and disowned all in one evening. Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas, Hutchinson.
“You hit my car, turkey!” A voice shattered his self-pitying thoughts. He turned to see Starsky, loping along the sandy path to where he stood, carrying a pale blue hooded sweatshirt in his hand. “Put this on. You’re gonna freeze to death out here,” he said, handing it to Hutch.
“How’d you find me?” He was so relieved for the warmth of the garment that he didn’t question where Starsky had found it. At first, he thought it was some old thing of Starsky’s, but as he straightened the sleeves, he encountered a ticket on one of them.
“Merry Christmas. That’s one of your presents, but I figured you needed it bad enough now to let you have it early.”
“Thanks,” Hutch responded, smiling a little. “How bad is the car?”
“Probably need a new front fender and headlight,” Starsky replied as he fell into step with Hutch walking along the shore. “It’s been through worse.”
“I am sorry about hitting your car. I figured you’d be out for my blood right about now.”
“Nah. It’s Christmas Eve. Now on the 26th, I might kick your ass for what you did to my car, but for tonight, it’s okay.”
“Something else to look forward to,” Hutch responded dismally.
“You wanna talk about it?”
“It’s over, Starsk.”
“What’s over?”
“The photo Cecile received? A copy of it was delivered by messenger service today. Somehow, my dad either opened the envelope or it wasn’t sealed—I don’t know. In any event, he saw it. There was a note on the back that said a copy had been sent to Simonetti.”
“That slimy little bastard.”
“He isn’t going to be sympathetic, I’m sure of that.”
“I wasn’t talking about Simonetti,” Starsky corrected. “Jordan. We knew the rest of the plan had to come together eventually. I thought maybe Mercer was it, but now I think he was just being the perverted little fucker he is.”
“You think Jordan arranged for this?”
“Merry Christmas, Hutchinson!” Starsky mocked the lilting tone of voice Jordan used when he was detailing one of his schemes. “It’s his M.O., inside and out. Let you get all relaxed and comfortable, and about the time you’re relaxing and enjoying the holiday, maybe with family, the other shoe drops and your career is history. Plus, he has it delivered in an unsealed envelope just in case you have any nosy relatives or friends.”
“Actually, Starsk, it doesn’t matter who sent the damn thing anymore. At least, not to me. It’s over.” He shrugged. “Maybe there’s some freedom in that. The thing you think is the worst thing that can happen, happens, and then you don’t have to fear it anymore.”
“This isn’t the worst thing that could happen,” Starsky retorted. “We’ve both faced the worst thing a few times. This is a walk in the park by comparison.”
“You’re right, I guess. It just…feels pretty big right now.”
“I know. For me too.”
“How’d you know I was out here?”
“I dunno. Just a lucky guess, I s’pose.”
“Came here the last time I thought I was leaving the force—only it was by choice that time, and not with my tail between my legs for being a closet junkie.” Hutch held up a hand. “Before you start another tirade about how that’s not what I am, save it. It doesn’t matter anymore—the semantics. To Simonetti and IA, it’s all the same.” Hutch slowed his pace and turned to face his partner. “I’m really, really sorry about this, buddy. You’re probably going to take this fall with me, and it’s not fair.”
“Neither was you getting shot up full of stuff and suffering like some kind of animal and then not being able to have any decent medical attention because we had to hide from the department. That wasn’t fair either. Life ain’t fair. As far as me takin’ the fall with you, hey, that’s what partners are for.”
“Not exactly. We don’t even have that anymore.”
“That’s probably the most retarded thing you ever said.” Starsky found a small stone and pitched it into the water. Standing side by side, staring out at the dark waves, it seemed like a bleak way to spend the holiday.
“It’s true. We’re probably both going to get fired, and then—”
“Then what? We’ll sell the house, pawn the antiques for all they’re worth, pack up our stuff and move on. If our partnership is reliant on departmental assignment, then I’ve been misjudging things for quite a long time. We can flip burgers down at Huggy’s, and you’re still gonna be my partner, you dope.”
“You really mean it about moving on? You wouldn’t mind moving away?”
“Once the ties are cut with the department, I’ve got nothin’ keepin’ me here. I mean, now that your dad knows, we could move out there and—”
“I doubt he’d hire a dope fiend to work on his precious ranch.”
“What?”
“That’s what he called me. A dope fiend. He wasn’t interested in explanations. Only what he saw in that photo. He just talked me down, said I wasn’t facing up to it or taking responsibility, or some such thing. That doesn’t surprise me.”
“But it still hurts.”
“I swear I don’t know why I let him get to me. He’s always treated me that way. Take responsibility. Any time I ever got in trouble, he never wanted to hear anything but a full confession. He never accepted that if I said I didn’t do it, I didn’t.”
“Did he…was he…abusive to you?”
“No—I think he slapped my face once when I was about twelve, and if I’m remembering the incident correctly, I probably had it coming for mouthing off to him. It’s just that if I was accused of anything, I might as well always confess to it, because if I didn’t, he went into this tirade about ‘at least being man enough to face up to the consequences of your actions.’ He hasn’t changed a bit.”
“My dad always listened to me. If he could catch me, that is,” Starsky recalled with a little smile. “I got off the hook a few times because he believed me—he knew me pretty well. ‘Course I got it twice as bad if he figured out I was lyin’.” He snorted a little laugh. “Sort of encourages you to be honest, ya know?”
“Too bad our fathers didn’t compare notes. Probably could have learned something from each other.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Did you ever hate your father?”
“No. I mean, I got mad—probably mostly scared—when I knew I was gonna get it, but I loved him. He loved me. I know that. He was under a lot of stress at work, and his patience with kids was about zip toward the last couple years.”
“What’re we gonna do?” It was a quiet, unobtrusive question, but it hit Starsky full force how scared and uncertain his partner was about the future. He had always envisioned Hutch as being the one who had so many options if they left police work. Maybe he didn’t after all.
“You’ve got your degree, so you’ll probably be able to find something pretty decent.”
“I have a degree, but all my practical experience is on the force, and I haven’t darkened the doors of a college in years. I’m probably outdated by now.”
“Maybe something in loss prevention—you know, setting up security systems for stores and things like that? Sometimes I see those jobs in the paper, and they want law enforcement experience along with the degree.”
“I don’t want to have to go in and explain this whole mess to another employer. If I go into security work, it’s always going to follow me. A history of drug use isn’t a drawing card in the security field.”
“So let’s buy a shack on the beach and you can sell paintings to the tourists and I can…steal valuables out of their cars while you keep ’em distracted.”
“An artist and a petty thief, huh? Possible.” Hutch chuckled a little.
“Let’s load up all our stuff and move somewhere totally different. We’ll find jobs of some sort there, and maybe I can still go back to school…we’ll figure somethin’ out. Might be sorta fun.”
“You don’t have to cast your lot with me, pal. If you can save yourself—”
“I know I don’t have to do anything. Unless you don’t want me tagging along.”
“Now who’s being a dope?” Hutch responded, elbowing his partner and grinning a little.
“You ready to go back and face the music at home?”
“No, but I suppose we should. Can’t stand out here all night.”
“Gettin’ a little nippy out here.” Starsky started back toward the cars, and Hutch followed.
“Thanks again for the sweatshirt. What’d you mean it was one of my presents? How many are there?”
“Well, I just got that today—I saw it at Kellerman’s in the mall and I thought you’d like it. The other stuff I got before.”
“How much other stuff?”
“A few things. Well, I guess about five all together—”
“Five? Didn’t think I was that good this year.”
“You weren’t, but I got carried away with the euphoric sentimentalism of the season. I love Christmas shopping, you know that.”
“I feel really lousy about dragging Dobey into this. All these years on the force, and now to face the music for something that isn’t even his doing.”
“Dobey and I made choices that day, and neither one of us regret them. Dobey said so himself.”
“When?”
“After the second picture surfaced. I thanked him for all he did back then, and he told me that he didn’t regret helping us out.” Starsky leaned against his car, now that they had reached their parking spots. “So quit beatin’ yourself up about this. We’ll get through it.” Starsky watched Hutch nod a little defeatedly. On an impulse, he reached out and pulled the slouch-shouldered figure into a tight hug. It was returned with equal pressure. “It’s okay, buddy. Me and thee, remember? Nothin’ the department can do to that.” Hutch didn’t say anything in response, but soon released his hold and stepped back.
“We better get going.”
* * * *
Hutch felt like the festive lights of the outdoor decorations were mocking him. His whole world was crumbling around his ears, and the fat plastic snowman by the little pine tree was still smiling as if nothing was different.
Starsky pulled into the driveway first, followed by his partner. They met at the side door, and went in together. John and Marion were seated at the table in the kitchen, nursing a pot of coffee and talking in hushed tones when their son and his partner arrived. Starsky never offered to go upstairs to stay out of the encounter. He felt Hutch needed some back-up here as much as he did on the street.
“It’s about time you showed up. Your mother’s been worried sick!” John stood up and shouted toward Hutch.
“Don’t speak for me, John.” Marion’s voice was unexpectedly clear and assertive. “Enough is enough. Ken, are you all right, dear?”
“I’m fine, Mom. Look, I’m willing to explain this situation if anyone wants to hear it. If not, I’m going to save my breath.”
“Of course we want to hear it.”
“Excuses,” John muttered, sitting back down at the table.
“Maybe you should hear what he has to say before you pass judgement. Common street criminals get that much courtesy under the law,” Starsky spoke up, startling John a little. Hutch’s partner had always been the soul of quiet courtesy around John and Marion, but he’d had all he could take of John and his blustering at Hutch.
“Ken, please, sit down and explain this mess to us so we understand what’s going on here.”
Hutch and Starsky took the other two of the four chairs at the table, and proceeded to tell the Hutchinsons the whole sordid story from start to finish. Marion dabbed at her eyes occasionally, John remained predominantly silent.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Marion asked when the last of the details of Hutch’s rescue had been related.
“Because of just what happened—I didn’t picture a very understanding response. Furthermore, two other cops put their careers on the chopping block to help me, so it wasn’t just my confidence to keep or betray.”
“So David is most likely in as much trouble as you are with this Simonetti character?” Marion clarified.
“Most likely. His part in covering it up probably would be enough for demotion or possibly dismissal. What’ll happen to Dobey, I have no idea.”
“I would think that this kind of experience would have cured you of your obsession with this ridiculous, life-threatening line of work. If you’re going to be forced out into the world to make some use of your abilities beyond chasing scum, perhaps it’s a blessing.” John stood up and began pacing. “I’m sorry I misjudged you before. I jumped to conclusions.”
“Thank you for the apology. As far as being ‘cured of my obsession,’ that whole topic is purely academic now. It’s over, and I’m out of a job. Now you know the truth.”
“When will you know? About the job, I mean?” Marion asked.
“My guess is it’ll all come crashing down after Christmas.”
“If there’s anything we can do…” John began, a little gruffly. “Well, I mean you know you’d have a home with us.”
“Both of you,” Marion spoke up quickly. “David, you’re part of the family, so don’t you hesitate to let us help you too.” She smiled a little sadly.
“Thanks, Marion.” Starsky returned the slight grin and looked over at Hutch. He looked pale, tired, and miserable. After Sandra’s death, Christmas was bound to be an ugly time anyway. Having to rejoice with Jack Elliot over mounds of photos of his baby daughter in various Christmas dresses hadn’t raised Hutch’s spirits much. Amanda Jane Elliot was almost exactly the same age as Elizabeth Marie Hutchinson would have been. “Hey,” he looked over at Hutch. “You up to goin’ out somewhere and gettin’ a bite to eat? It’s after seven.”
“Okay.” Hutch rose from his chair. “How about it?” he directed toward his parents. Then, looking back at Starsky, “Where were you thinking?”
“LaFontaine’s? I can call and see if we can get a reservation.”
“Okay.” Hutch headed for the stairs. “That all right with you two?”
“Fine,” Marion spoke up immediately. John nodded, though his expression was still grim.
* * * *
Dinner at the fancy restaurant was a hollow and depressing experience. No one ate more than a few forkfuls, and the festive Christmas music and decorations seemed to mock their whole situation. After they’d finished eating, the somber group returned to the house, Hutch disappearing upstairs to his room, John skulking off to the library under the guise of finding something on the shelf to read. Marion closed herself in the guest room and Starsky, assessing the evening as a loss in terms of the holiday, settled in the living room with the evening paper and the stereo playing a stack of records. If they weren’t going to have Christmas after all, he damn well wasn’t going to listen to the line-up of festive carols on the local radio stations.
“Didn’t turn out to be much of a Christmas Eve, did it?” Marion’s voice startled him from where she stood near the French doors. Still dressed in her expensive-looking red brocade dress and bedecked in pearls, she appeared unwilling to spend the Christmas holiday in anything less than the proper attire despite the circumstances.
“We kinda had a feeling the other shoe would drop sooner or later.” Starsky straightened and reached to turn down the stereo.
“No—leave it. I like it.” She sat on the couch, not far from the ornate Victorian era chair he occupied. It was about as comfortable as the desk chairs in the squad room, but Starsky was determined to sit in it and soak up the atmosphere, since his inclination was generally to hole up in the TV room—the only modern-looking room in the house.
“‘Saturday Night Fever’? I wouldn’t picture Hutch’s mom being a closet disco fan,” Starsky responded, smiling a little.
“I tried to get John to take lessons with me when it was so popular, but he didn’t go for the idea. Said we were too old. I think he was just afraid of what his friends at the club would think if he was out there doing the hustle instead of the fox trot.” She chuckled a little. “Ken said you really love to dance—he told me that once, when I was telling him about trying to drag his father to lessons.”
“I used to go out dancing all the time during the disco craze. It was fun. Then I was shot, and by the time I got my booty rehabilitated enough to shake it again, I was sort of out of the habit.” He smiled as Marion laughed at the comment. Both were silent a moment. The last song died, and the next one started. ‘Manhattan Skyline,’ a fairly lengthy instrumental started playing. “You wanna give it a whirl?” Starsky tossed his paper aside and stood up, offering his hand toward Hutch’s startled mother.
“Now?” She questioned, though she took the hand extended to her and stood up. Starsky pulled her into a tango stance.
“Welcome to Ramon’s school of the dance,” he announced dramatically, adding just the right Mediterranean accent. “You wanna learn the hustle?” Starsky asked, stepping back and returning to his usual persona.
“Are you serious?”
“There’s just one thing you should know first.”
“What’s that?” she asked, obviously amused by the whole experience.
“I have been known to dip without warning,” Ramon cautioned, flexing his eyebrows lasciviously.
Hutch’s mother was a remarkably good dancer, her sense of rhythm excellent and her steps no less graceful or coordinated than the last 25-year-old Starsky had danced with at Fever. She was a quick learner, and before long, she was able to keep up with the steps without any verbal coaching.
The last thing Hutch expected—or wanted—to hear at that moment was the pulsing beat of disco music. He was settled in for a world-class sulk, sprawled on his bed, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. It’s hard to feel sorry for yourself properly when you can’t discern which is your heartbeat and which is the bass from the stereo speakers. He finally unfolded himself from his rest and headed out of his room. How could Starsky be so insensitive as to annoy his parents with some throbbing music—on Christmas Eve, of all times?
John Hutchinson was coming out of the library as Hutch exited his room.
“What is that racket, anyway?” he asked, annoyed.
“I don’t know. Starsky must have the stereo on downstairs. I’ll go ask him to turn it down.” Hutch plodded down the main staircase, with his father behind him. Both froze in the doorway to the living room, stunned by what they saw. To the throbbing beat of “The Hustle,” Marion and Starsky were completing the named dance almost perfectly, laughing and looking as if they were having the time of their lives. Father and son exchanged incredulous looks, and returned to their observation of the dancing. When the song ended, Ramon executed a perfect dip, bringing both himself and Marion to a respectable fit of giggles as they straightened up.
“Hi.” Starsky noticed the two observers. “Sorry, John, I guess you’ll have to dance with Hutch. I already got the girl.”
“What on earth is going on here?” John demanded, not sounding amused. “Marion, for God’s sake, what are you doing?”
“I’m enjoying myself!” she shot back. “You ought to try it sometime. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not at the club. You don’t have to worry about your stuffed shirt friends!”
“I’m sorry if I—”
“David, you didn’t do anything wrong, so don’t apologize,” Marion interrupted. “Look, we’re all a little edgy tonight, so maybe we just need to take a step back here and cool off before this gets ugly. It is still Christmas.” Hutch still felt a little uneasy playing referee between his parents. Being a fully grown adult did nothing to assuage that discomfort.
“Forgive me if I don’t like to see your mother acting like a teenager and throwing herself at my son’s partner!”
“Don’t talk about my mother that way—ever again, do you hear me?” Hutch turned on his father with a glare that pinned him to the banister in front of which he was standing.
“And don’t you start giving me orders! Maybe this is acceptable behavior in your eyes, but where I come from, 60-year-old women don’t behave this way!”
“Oh that’s just fine, John. Why don’t you remind me how old I am! Why, for a few minutes, I might have gotten carried away and forgotten that I was over the hill!” Marion shouted back. “I’m so sick of your propriety and your appearances and your priorities for all of us to live by! It wasn’t until I spent some time in an environment full of life and love and laughter and complete irreverence for all of that…baloney you’ve been stuffing down my throat about our image that I realized what a farce our whole lives have been—ever since you bought that first God-forsaken horse that had the ill fortune to win a few races and make you some money. We haven’t had a moment’s peace since you got the taste for gold and forgot that anything else ever mattered!
“What disgusts me the most, though, is that I let it happen. I let you raise my daughter to be a spoiled little brat—and I let you bully my son into thinking that there was nothing else in this life more important than winning—achieving! Thank God he survived your…your tyranny! Well, so did I, John. I’m still the same Marion Schuler you married all those years ago—because you loved my energy and passion for life! Now there’s a good laugh. Do you remember telling me that? Do you?” she demanded, moving steadily closer to her stunned husband.
“And from the first moment you saw the promise of wealth on the horizon, you’ve worked at slowly killing Marion Schuler—so you could turn her into…into…one of the Stepford Wives!” She hurried past John and Hutch, and took the stairs at a good speed. The slam of the door was unexpectedly loud in the room newly silenced by the absence of yelling and the stereo being turned off by Starsky.
“Marion!” John hurried upstairs after his wife. Hutch didn’t intervene; it was more than obvious that his mother could take care of herself.
“I’m sorry,” Starsky said quietly as Hutch walked past him into the living room. “I guess I shouldn’t’ve—”
“My mother’s right, Starsk. This isn’t your fault. I haven’t seen her like that…I was going to say ‘in years,’ but I don’t know as I’ve ever seen her like that. She looked so…alive. I used to see little inklings that she had a feisty side, but never like that.” Hutch stood in front of the large tree with the over-sized star glistening as much as it should for what it had cost. Well, maybe spending the money keeps her sane…maybe it’s revenge to spend it as fast as he can make it…
“You okay?” Starsky asked, coming up behind him and resting a hand on his shoulder.
“Been better, but I’m all right.” He turned toward Starsky and smiled. “Not much of a Christmas, huh?”
“Well, we’re alive.” Starsky looked up at the tree. “Sometimes after all that happened with Gunther, not to mention this crap with Jordan and Mercer…that seems like the whole ball game right there.”
“I know I should put it in perspective that way, but I can’t…at least not now. I think I’ll turn in.”
“You wanna talk a while?”
“No, thanks. I’m tired. Don’t worry about my father, Starsk. You didn’t do anything wrong tonight. At least my mother had a little fun out of it while it lasted.” Hutch started toward the stairs.
“So did I. She’s quite a lady, your mom.”
“Yeah, she is, isn’t she?” Hutch paused on the stairs, smiling for a moment before he resumed his upward trek.
* * * *
Starsky had stared at the ceiling for over two hours when he finally reached a decision. Inaction had never been his motto. He had never been a “reactive” person…he didn’t just wait for a situation to unfold and react to it, he took action. He did something about it. And now he was going to have to do something for Hutch.
Dressing as quietly as he could, he slithered down the hall and down the back stairs. He stopped in the living room to pick up the manilla envelope with the photo in it and then hurried out to the car. He was relieved not to have been stopped by Hutch, though he doubted his partner was sleeping very soundly, if at all.
The Simonetti residence was in a quiet suburban cul-de-sac, resplendent with Christmas lights and wreaths, trees standing guard in the living room windows displaying sparkling lights. The house where Starsky stopped was dark except for the Christmas tree. At two a.m., that was not a surprise. Gripping the envelope determinedly, he strode up to the door and rang the bell twice. After several seconds, a light went on in an upstairs window, and shortly, the door was opened. A rumpled, disdained Simonetti stood there in his robe.
“Starsky. I should have known.”
“I take it that means you got one of these,” he replied, holding up the envelope.
“Come in.” Simonetti stood aside while Starsky entered and pushed the front door closed behind him. “It’s okay, honey, go back to bed,” he directed his wife, who only descended the stairs partway before returning to their room.
“I’m sorry to come here this late, but I thought you should hear the story behind this before you jump to any conclusions.”
“The photograph is fairly self-explanatory. Let’s talk in the living room.” He led the way into a pleasantly appointed room, boasting a moderately-sized Christmas tree surrounded by numerous bright packages.
“I know that Hutch and I aren’t exactly IA’s favorite team, and on a personal level, we’ve had our differences, but I’m just asking you to hear me out before you go after Hutch for this.” Starsky sat down in a chair across a coffee table from the couch Simonetti occupied.
“It looks like he was shooting up. You tell me what I’m supposed to see then.”
“You remember Ben Forest—the whole scene when Hutch and I busted him back in ’75?”
“Courtesy of his twisted kid, I don’t think anyone’s about to forget Forest in a hurry. But yes, I remember you two making that bust. He had abducted Hutchinson, hadn’t he?”
“Yes. See, Hutch met this girl, Jeannie, and started seeing her, only Forest thought of her as his personal property. She wanted to get away from him, and Hutch was trying to help her. Forest grabbed him to find out where Jeannie was, since Hutch had stashed her somewhere by then. His goons worked him over—the usual interrogation drill—tied him to the chair, blindfolded, and spent the rest of the evening beating the hell out of him until he passed out.” Starsky ran a hand over his face and continued. “Since he wasn’t going to give in to good old fashioned muscle, Forest suggested another strategy. Shoot him up on smack, get him high, hooked, then string him out. Then start asking him about Jeannie again—so by now they were using the beatings and the drug. At some point, he broke, told them where she was, and I guess they let him have a shot of something, because he was flying again for a little while after that.”
“You were there?”
“No, I wasn’t there. Not while it was happening. But I was there for the aftermath. They decided Hutch was expendable after he’d talked, so they loaded him in a car and headed for the docks. He heard them talking about dumping him, debating which point would be best, where the water was deepest and the sharks…” Starsky took a deep breath and continued. “He got away somehow, ran for it. One of the patrol cars spotted him, and called it in, and I was there in a flash. Hutch was dazed, disoriented, sick…he was lying in an alley when I got there.”
“Who were the patrolmen?”
“Bernie Glassman and his partner. I told Bernie I’d take full responsibility. It isn’t his fault. I told him not to make a report.”
“So you hid him ’til he kicked it?”
“I took him to a safe place, helped him kick it. Do you have any idea what it’s like to see somebody…banged up like that, know somebody’s beaten the hell out of him and God knows what else, and not be able to even get medical attention? We knew the department would probably fire him if anybody found out. And Hutch deserved a little dignity, because God knows Forest’s people hadn’t left him much of it. I never knew for sure when he was in pain if it was the withdrawal or something hurting him that he needed a doctor for. I just had to take care of him as best I could and pray it would work itself out. In a way, it did. He wasn’t obviously seriously injured, because he did recover. But he suffered through every minute of that withdrawal cold turkey. And he never touched the stuff again.”
“But you still hid all this from the department? I’m assuming Dobey was in on that little scheme too?”
“No comment. But no, I didn’t report it to the department. Look, Hutch has lived the last six years of his life feeling guilty, like he had some dirty secret he had to be ashamed of, because he was hiding from IA. He was a victim. None of this was his choice. All I’m asking is that before you go after him for this, you take a step back and look at what’s just, what’s right—not just what’s in the regulations.”
“Starsky, enforcing the regulations is my job. That’s what IA’s all about.”
“But it doesn’t stop you from being human. Look at that man in that photograph and put yourself in his place. You’re a good cop, you lay your life on the line for your job every day, and through no fault of your own, something happens that could take it all away from you. You suffer a horrible ordeal, and then you have to keep paying for it over and over and over again as you sweat out each year wondering if someone’s gonna find out you were a victim. Not that you shot up, not that you got high, not that you were a junkie—that you were a victim. Now the only other person who would be likely to make this public is dead. I sure as hell won’t be talking and neither will Hutch. So it all rests with you. I know that’s probably like a dream come true to bust us, but please, this isn’t right. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“You know, Starsky, believe it or not, I don’t sit up nights thinking of ways to persecute you two.” Simonetti smiled and shook his head. “And I don’t enjoy this. I do my job, and sometimes that means getting in people’s faces, or busting them. That doesn’t mean it’s always my personal choice.”
“But who is this gonna serve? You bust a good, decent cop off the force because of what some slimeball did to him—that way, the cops lose and the slimeball wins. Look, I’m not gonna beg you because it won’t do any good. If I thought it would, I’d be on my knees right now because that’s how wrong it is to persecute Hutch for what happened to him. I’m just givin’ you the whole story, and hoping that maybe, one cop to another, you’ll see that the value of Hutch on the force outweighs the value of following the book on this one.” Not expecting his words to sink in, Starsky waited with slightly suspended breath for Simonetti’s next response.
“If things happened the way you say they did, this is without a doubt an unfortunate situation. However, the department has policies regarding officers having histories of chemical dependencies—”
“But this wasn’t a chemical dependency—at least not for more than a few days. He was forced—shot up against his will. And when he was strong enough and coherent enough to be in his right mind again, he rejected it. He fought it, and he’s never touched it since.” Starsky stood up and started pacing. Then another analogy struck him, and though he was less than comfortable discussing it with Simonetti, he launched into it anyway. “You know that there was a sexual assault charge dismissed against Arnold Mercer in connection with his assault on me, right?”
“I heard that. What does that have to do with—”
“If Mercer had raped me, would that make me homosexual? Would you be investigating me to see if I was gay all of a sudden because I was forced to participate in an act against my will?”
“I think that would be a rather archaic approach.”
“This is no different. A rape is a violation, inflicting an act on someone against their will. Hutch’s ‘addiction,’” Starsky made quotes in the air with his fingers, “is no more a reflection on his character than a rape is on the victim’s. You wouldn’t have thrown me off the force if I had been victimized by Mercer to that degree, provided I could have gotten my head together and done my job—with counseling and time off and reassignment in the meantime if necessary. Hutch didn’t have any of those luxuries. My God, I couldn’t even take him to an emergency room to get his bruises checked out. He had to beat it on his own, and he had to show up at work like nothing ever happened. And he did it. With no help from any artificial chemicals—including methadone or anything most people would be given to help them get through withdrawal.”
“Starsky, I won’t argue that this is an unusual case. It certainly doesn’t fit the narrow parameters of a classic ‘addiction’ or ‘habit.’ But it doesn’t remove the fact that it happened. I can’t pretend I don’t know about it.”
“Yes you can.”
“You’re asking me to cover for Hutchinson, is that it?”
“Yeah, essentially. Because he deserves to keep the job he’s done so well for so long. Because it was never his fault.” Starsky watched the other man rise and pace a bit.
“Go home, Starsky. It’s late.”
“You’re going to crucify him, aren’t you?” Starsky asked, standing up.
“Quit while you’re ahead, Sergeant.” Simonetti started toward the door. “I will consider what you’ve said.”
“You haven’t decided for sure then?”
“As I said, I will consider what you’ve told me. I can’t give you an answer right now.”
“That’s all I can ask. I’m sorry I came by so late.” Starsky paused at the front door.
“That’s all right. I’ll tell my kids it was Santa Claus. I had to get up and eat the cookies in an hour or so anyway.” Something about such a human comment coming out of Simonetti made Starsky chortle a little.
“How old are they?”
“Four and six. I think the six-year-old is pretty suspicious, but as soon as we tell him, his sister isn’t going to be spared the vivid truth either.”
“Older brothers tend to do things like that, I guess.” Starsky thought back of a few things he’d pulled on Nicky in their youth.
“I’ll be in touch soon.” Simonetti opened the front door and Starsky walked through it onto the porch.
“Please think hard about this.”
“I will. Good night, Starsky.” The door closed quietly but decisively.
* * * *
Starsky made his way stealthily up the back stairs and headed for his bedroom. He paused when something caught his eye in the library. Sitting on the windowseat, knees drawn up to his chest beneath his crossed arms, a very familiar silhouette was staring out the window.
“Hutch?”
“Where’d you go?” The response was little more than a whisper, neither of them wanting to wake their houseguests.
“I went for a drive.”
“Oh.” The response didn’t sound convinced, but also sounded too tired to press for the truth.
“You okay, buddy?” Starsky moved to occupy his usual seat opposite his friend.
“Wanted to give you something before tomorrow morning. It’s right there.” Hutch indicated a package, about 20 inches square, wrapped in festive paper with a large card attached.
“Can I open it now?” Starsky asked enthusiastically.
“Of course you can, dummy. I wanted you to open it before morning.” There was a little smile in Hutch’s voice, though not much trace of it on his face. “You’ll probably be disappointed. I can’t top the VCR.”
“How d’you know I’m gonna be disappointed?” Starsky picked up the package, which was a little heavy, and felt almost like a framed picture.
“Read the card first.”
“Okay.” Starsky opened the white envelope with his name written neatly on the front. Inside was a card with a Christmas tree on it, without a pre-written verse inside. Instead, Hutch’s writing appeared.
Dear Starsk,
I know this Christmas isn’t turning out too great, but at least I wanted you to understand what I was trying to tell you about what my dad said the other night. I don’t want you to think you’ve held me back somehow. I couldn’t find the right words then, but fortunately, the radio helped me out a few days ago. I heard this song that said, “I can fly higher than an eagle, you are the wind beneath my wings.”
That says it all, better than I could. I wanted this gift to remind you of that, just so you stay real clear on that point. And thanks for sticking with me the past few months. I know it hasn’t been easy, and you’ve had to take some embarrassment in the press because of me, and there’ll no doubt be more once everything hits the fan with IA. You’ve been there all the way, and you never complain—even though I do. You’ve been the wind beneath my wings, pal. Thanks.
Love, Hutch
“I don’t know what to say,” Starsky responded in a choked whisper.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just open the package,” Hutch directed, smiling a little.
“Okay.” Starsky laid the card aside on the window seat as if it were his most treasured possession. After a little pause, he tore into the package, amusing Hutch and breaking a little of the emotionalism. Starsky was still the ultimate little kid when it came to presents.
“You don’t have to hang it up or anything. I just wanted you to have it.”
“It’s…beautiful.” Starsky studied the painting he held. Soft grey and white, representing mountains, blended into equally muted shades of blue sky. The focal point of the painting was an eagle in flight, slightly abstract in its shape, leaving a trail of blended pastel colors beneath its wings. “When did you do this?” Starsky asked without looking up.
“I heard the song the day after I had that argument with my dad you overheard—it came on the radio while I was waiting for you to pick up our take-outs. I got the idea for the painting, and I set up shop in the basement, because that’s the only spot I figured you wouldn’t look.”
“It’s…wow.”
“That’s the best critique on my work I think I ever got,” Hutch replied with a little laugh.
“How could you think I’d be disappointed with this? It’s beautiful. And every time I look at it, I’m gonna know what it means.”
“Merry Christmas, partner.” Hutch started to unfold himself from his perch on the window seat.
“Just a minute. There’s somethin’ I want you to know too.” Starsky paused, a little uncertain of how he wanted to say what was on his mind. Hutch was standing near the window seat, waiting. Starsky stood up, carefully placing the painting on the seat he’d occupied. “I don’t want you to…go around thinkin’ that you ever embarrassed me. I…I’ve always been…so proud to be your partner—and I mean always. No exceptions. The whole time.” Starsky looked down for a moment. “Maybe I was proudest of you when I found you in that alley.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Starsky, I—”
“You survived something horrible, and somehow, you managed to get away. And you know what I thought? I thought ‘that’s my partner—you can do what you want but you can’t keep him down.’ I was always real proud of you that you survived, you escaped, but most importantly, you kicked the stuff and you never looked back. That took guts. And yeah, I know I was there to help, and Huggy and Dobey covered…but there were a lot of days and nights when no one was watchin’ you after that…and in our business, it’s not like you don’t have access to it. But you never looked back. You rose above it. No matter what happens now, or what anybody says in the papers or at the department, there’s nobody I’d rather call my partner, and certainly nobody I’d be prouder to have for my best friend.”
Hutch didn’t answer him, but reached out to his partner and pulled him close. As usual, Starsky knew just what he needed to hear. And if Starsky was one thing, he was sincere. He didn’t say a lot of pretty words he didn’t mean.
“You want a present?” Starsky asked, returning the embrace. Hutch smiled but didn’t respond. He held on a minute longer, and then backed away.
“A present huh?”
“Yeah—I mean, I can’t top this one—nothin’ could—but I got a few goodies stashed under my bed.”
“Sounds great.” Hutch followed Starsky, who carefully gathered the painting and card and carried them with him to his room, where he closed the door behind them and proceeded to prostrate himself on the floor next to the bed, groping under the dust ruffle with a precision that amused Hutch as he rose from the prone position with exactly the items he sought. “I figure I should save this one for tomorrow morning.” Starsky stashed one moderately-sized box under the bed again. He put three other packages on the bed, where Hutch had seated himself near the foot. Kicking his shoes off and tossing his jacket in the general direction of the overstuffed chair in the corner, Starsky climbed up on the bed himself, sitting near the headboard.
“All three?”
“I told ya I had five all together. You already got the sweatshirt, and I figure I oughtta save one for tomorrow. Guess I kinda got carried away. Go on, open ’em.”
“Okay,” Hutch responded, smiling a little. His previous grim mood was giving way to his partner’s Christmas spirit, and for the first time in days, he actually felt light-hearted. The first package he opened was a book on herb gardening. Hutch had expressed an interest in putting in a vegetable and herb garden in the spring, so Starsky had gotten him the necessary research material. “This is really great, pal. Looks like everything I need to know,” he said, thinking how nice it would be if they could keep the house long enough for him to plant anything. Jobless people don’t live in restored Victorian homes with herb gardens.
“There’s a section in the back that tells you how to make some really good stuff with ’em too. Spaghetti sauces, bread—”
“Ah, the ulterior motive revealed,” Hutch replied, laughing.
“Yeah, well, I’m just takin’ an interest in your hobbies,” he said, grinning.
“Starsk, I only got you one other present besides the painting.”
“And the VCR.”
“Oh, yeah, that—but that was Hanukkah.”
“You coulda bought out the mall and you couldn’t’a topped that painting. Now shut up and open your stuff.”
Hutch tore into the next package, a little stunned with what he found. In an ornate gold frame was a posed head and shoulders portrait of Sandra, dressed in her best navy blue dress, highlighted with tasteful pearl jewelry. She wore a faint smile on her face.
“She wanted to have a really nice picture of herself for you to put on your desk. She said I should get it blown up only to a 5×7 since you didn’t have much room at work, but since…well, I thought you might like an 8×10 of it.”
“How did you get in the middle of all this?” Hutch asked, still studying Sandra’s face, her smile, remembering how just that faint little smile was enough to steal his heart forever…
“I took the picture. After we did all that goofing around at the house with those before and after pictures and she posed with the paintbrush in her teeth—all that stuff—she asked me if I could take a really good picture. She said she thought it would mean the most to you that way—that it was her picture and that I took it. So she had me come over to her place and take the picture. That was probably about a week before…well, I didn’t know if you could handle it right after, so I hung onto it.”
“I don’t think I would have handled it too well right after.” Hutch ran his fingers lightly over the image trapped beneath the glass. “It’s beautiful. I never had a really good posed photo of her—I had some candids, but nothing like this.”
“I hope it didn’t make you feel bad—but I thought you should have it, and maybe it had been long enough now that you’d like to have it.”
“It’s perfect. Thank you. I’ll think I’ll put it on the shelves near the window in my room.” Hutch had a set of built-in shelves near the large window in his bedroom, and the photo would fit perfectly among all of Hutch’s pictures, which resided there.
“Hey—you’ve got one more to open.”
“I’m just taking my time here and enjoying it a little, Starsky. Not everyone needs immediate gratification, you know.” He was repressing a grin as he chided his partner, who took it with as much seriousness as he usually took one of Hutch’s lectures.
“Nothin’ wrong with a little immediate gratification now and then.”
“No, I s’pose not.” Hutch started opening the final package, and laughed when he pulled out a bright red t-shirt with the following slogan: “Support the Arts: Kiss an Artist.”
“I thought just in case you got back in the business of selling paintings again, you could wear that to your next gallery showing.”
“It would turn a few heads, that’s for sure.” Hutch held it up.
“You can try it out on Cecile, anyway.”
“Yeah—I ought to wear it on our next date—when we go to one of those overpriced restaurants.”
“Hey, she wants you to be part of the artsy crowd. That means you gotta start bein’ eccentric… ‘course, I always knew you were a little weird.”
“Oh is that right?” Hutch asked, feigning offense.
“Hey, if your partner can’t tell you, who can?” Starsky grabbed one of the fat pillows off his bed and hit Hutch full in the face with it. In one swift gesture, Hutch pounced on the remaining pillow and returned the blow.
“You’re gonna regret this, Starsk,” he warned after the direct hit to his partner’s face.
“Oh yeah? Make me!” Starsky was off the bed and on his feet in seconds, swiping at Hutch with the fluffy weapon. Sliding off the bed, Hutch swung his pillow in retaliation. “You call that a hit?” Starsky goaded, swatting Hutch with his pillow.
“You wanna see a real hit? Hold onto your hat, pal!”
Marion wasn’t sure what disturbed her, but she soon realized upon coming to that she was hearing a mixture of laughter and voices, both unsuccessfully trying to be quiet. Curious, she pulled on her robe and slippers and made her way quietly down the hall, but soon stopped worrying about the sound of her own footsteps. The wild laughter and only marginally hushed shouts from Starsky’s room would certainly more than mask any sound she made. She even knocked on the door, but no one responded. Finally, unable to stand the curiosity, she opened the door.
Amidst a shower of feathers, her son and his partner were still slugging each other with deflating pillows, yelling the occasional derisive remarks back and forth, trying to control laughter that seemed well beyond either one’s control. She didn’t remember if she’d ever seen Ken have a pillow fight with anyone before, even when he had a friend stay over. He and Jack Mitchell had rough-housed and even attempted an occasional nocturnal escape when they were teenagers. But a pillow fight? Her usually calm, reserved son just didn’t seem the type. Of course, he hadn’t had Starsky around when he was growing up. That was probably Ken’s loss and his parents’ blessing, she thought, laughing at the messy battle raging in front of her.
Panting and having depleted the pillows, both fell across the bed in haphazard directions, laughing and still bickering about something.
“Next time we do this in your room—then you’ll need new pillows and haveta clean all this up,” Starsky stated, still breathing heavily.
“Mom!” Hutch straightened a little from his flattened position on the feather-littered bed.
“I heard voices—sorry to interrupt,” she said, stifling a smile that refused to be squelched.
“Sorry we woke you up,” Starsky responded, not in the least regretful for the levity that had shaken Hutch out of his morose spirits.
“Think nothing of it. But you two should get some rest. Santa won’t come until you’re asleep.” She smiled a little as she pulled the door closed behind her.
“I don’t believe she said that.” Starsky was still staring at the ceiling, sprawled diagonally across the bed.
“Ouch. That’s my head you just hit with your knee, idiot.”
“Then get your head outta my way,” Starsky countered.
“I think we’re too old for this,” Hutch groaned, tipping back.
“Look at this room!” Starsky sat partway up. “And I don’t have any pillows left.”
“You shoulda thought of that before you clubbed me with one then.”
“This’ll take forever to clean up.”
“Well, guess I’ll turn in.” Hutch got up, stretching languidly.
“What’m I s’posed t’do?” Starsky looked injured that Hutch could consider going to bed and leaving him in the mound of feathers, messy and pillow-less.
“You started the pillow fight, pal,” Hutch kept it up, smiling a little under his mustache. He yawned and stretched ostentatiously, producing a further pout from Starsky.
“Boy that’s really somethin’.” Starsky got up and started picking up the discarded remains of the pillows.
“I’ll help you clean it up in the morning.”
“I can’t sleep in this,” Starsky protested.
“So sleep on a couch.” Starsky shot him a wounded look. “All right already,” he relented, realizing that the profusion of couches in the large house didn’t mean any of them were all that comfortable, and it was Christmas Eve. Hutch could almost hear his mother making some remark about “no room at the inn” if she found his partner laid out on one of the couches. “You can bunk in with me tonight and we’ll clean it up in the morning. Just put a nickel in it because I want to get some rest.”
“Some people sure get grouchy fast,” Starsky grumbled.
Settled in for sleep, it made Hutch uneasy that he hadn’t heard any snoring or sensed any loss of consciousness from Starsky. They were back to back, with plenty of room in the big bed not to bump into each other, but he could still sense the other was wide awake. He hoped this wouldn’t be the time Starsky would choose to enlighten him about some new, bizarre Christmas statistic he’d read. Just as he predicted, the voice came out of the shadows.
“Hutch? You awake?” Starsky asked. Hutch contemplated ignoring him. Sleep was right around the corner if his partner would just keep his thoughts to himself. But Starsky would know if he was faking it.
“Yeah.”
“Mel said Schoemacher put his house up for sale.”
“When?” That piqued Hutch’s interest.
“Coupla days ago.” Silence reigned again for a few minutes. “Hutch?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think he gave up so easy—about the flag and everything? I mean, ’til he put the house up for sale, I kept thinkin’ maybe he was gonna pull something else.”
“Having the cops on his back most likely kept him in check. After what happened, he probably didn’t want to risk getting tied in to the first incident.”
“Probably not.”
“I didn’t know you still gave him much thought, buddy.” Hutch turned on his back to look over at Starsky, who was still on his side, facing the opposite direction. When he felt the other’s eyes on him, he flopped onto his back too and looked over at Hutch.
“It’s not that I think about him a lot, but…knowing he was back there…after what happened…” Starsky paused and shook his head, staring back at the ceiling. “Made me jumpy I guess. Pretty stupid, huh? You’re right about him not wanting to mess with the cops.”
“It’s not stupid. He’s a nut. They don’t always follow logic. This one obviously wants to be a weekend Nazi. He wants to live in a respectable neighborhood, hold down a job, keep his record clear, and just hate when it’s convenient and safe. I’m tellin’ you, Starsk, there was an incident waiting to happen with him and those guys from the watch group. I overheard a few comments last time we went to one of the meetings that made me really uneasy. I’m just relieved he’s leaving.”
“Me too. Maybe we’ll get some normal neighbors.”
“We’ve got nowhere to go but up, that’s for sure.”
“True.” Starsky fidgeted with the blanket a moment. “Are you still worried about…you know, the Simonetti thing?”
“At least we have a new euphemism for it—we don’t have to call it ‘the drug thing’ anymore,” Hutch said, trying to lighten the mood a little.
“I’m serious.”
“Sure I’m still worried. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Maybe it’ll all work itself out. Maybe Simonetti’ll get visited by three spirits or something.” Starsky rolled back on his side, facing away. “‘Night, Hutch.”
“Yeah, sleep tight,” Hutch replied absentmindedly as he continued to stare at the ceiling. Starsky started snoring a little now. Hutch finally dozed off, having a very distinct suspicion that Simonetti had been visited by at least one spirit that night.
* * * *
Marion was up early fixing a big breakfast, so the smells wafting up the stairs drew all three men out of hiding by shortly after seven in the morning. If the Hutchinsons were still at odds with one another, they had called a truce for Christmas Day. The group exchanged polite conversation around the breakfast table, though there was a slight strain in the air after the previous evening’s argument.
After finishing breakfast, the group adjourned to the living room to open gifts. Needless to say, a heavy cloud hung over them knowing that the following day would probably see the reaction of Simonetti and IA to the heroin incident, but the group seemed able to put that somewhat aside, at least long enough to exchange a few gifts.
Unsure what to buy the wealthy couple who has everything, after a two-hour walk through the mall and countless gift shops, Starsky and Hutch had gone in together on a unique sculpted floor lamp that boasted a desert theme. Knowing his mother would love to brag how her son gave her that on their trip to California, and being it looked so, well, Californian, it seemed like the perfect gift. Marion seemed as thrilled as he anticipated she would be, while his father was polite but somewhat dismayed by the large, heavy and very distinctive item.
Hutch was pleased with the watch, though he questioned whether or not his father had taken any part in selecting the inscription: “To Ken: We’re proud of you. Love, Mom & Dad.” He chose not to over-analyze it and just enjoy the moment, slipping it on and setting it. His mother seemed more than a little relieved at the response, and managed to catch Starsky’s eye for a little wink when Hutch wasn’t looking.
Hutch opened the last of his gifts from his partner, a tan shirt he’d pretty much picked out himself the last time they were in Kellerman’s men’s department together. Starsky’s gift from Hutch was a red jacket he’d admired on the same shopping trip. They had to laugh a little at the fact that they had parted company on that, their official Christmas shopping expedition, and somehow managed to return to the same department in the same store and buy each other’s gifts without running head-on into each other.
Starsky finally got around to opening his gift from Hutch’s parents. After opening what looked like a shirt box, he was frustrated to find an envelope inside. Great. A couple more Christmases associated with the Hutchinson family and I can start the Starsky National Forest. He forced himself to smile and make a couple of pat anticipatory comments as he opened the envelope. His eyes bulged at its contents. A gift certificate for $1,000 from The Greenery was inside. The Greenery was the lawn and garden store where Starsky and Marion had found the tree topper, and while they were there, he’d explained a few of his ideas for restoring the garden in back, which included numerous plantings and a fountain.
“This is…thank you, but this is too much. I can’t accept it,” he said, smiling a little and putting it back in the envelope. Hutch looked puzzled, and he handed him the gift.
“Of course you can accept it, David. On the condition that you keep me posted and send pictures while you’re doing the project.” Marion smiled warmly. Hutch wondered what the point of giving Starsky $1,000 worth of gardening goodies was when they would doubtlessly be moving as soon as the hammer fell with IA. She noticed his lingering hesitancy. “I would love for you to use that toward restoring the garden—provided you put in that fountain.”
“We’ll be insulted if you refuse it, Dave,” John added, smiling a little.
“I guess that settles it then,” Starsky replied, smiling back. “Thank you. At the first sign of spring, this’ll get put to good use.” Starsky played the game of optimism, figuring the “good use” would be cashing it in to support themselves after being fired.
Marion had located a church nearby with a late morning service, so the group made its way there after finishing with the gifts. She had insisted on preparing Christmas dinner with all the trimmings early in their visit, so it was no surprise that she disappeared into the kitchen with threats to the men in the house to stay out of her way while she concocted various masterpieces.
They all planned to attend the Christmas gathering at the Dobeys’ that evening, an annual event that featured eggnog, punch and assorted holiday desserts Edith created. Christine was sure to be there as well, which put a definite spring in Starsky’s step. He hadn’t been able to make connections with her for another evening out before the holiday, and once everything came crashing down with IA, it was a pretty good bet he wouldn’t be seeing her again. An unemployed cop who leaves the department under disciplinary actions isn’t exactly an up-and-coming young detective’s ideal catch for a boyfriend. Then again, he had to admit that his relationship with Christine was mostly fun and games anyway. He doubted either one of them harbored any deep emotional bonds with the other.
Cecile had made plans with her family over Christmas, so the get-together for dinner prior to the holiday would be the sole opportunity for her to get to know the Hutchinsons. Hutch was glad his partner had urged him to set up the occasion, feeling that at least his parents had seen him “handling” Sandra’s death sufficiently to start dating again. His mother, of course, had been perceptive enough to know on what a shaky ground his recovery from his fiancée’s death really rested.
* * * *
Simonetti tightened the last piece of plastic to bring his daughter’s Barbie doll house to completion. Another successful construction project in the expanding Barbie subdivision growing along the wall in Tammy’s room, he thought, smiling to himself as he watched the little girl subjecting her newest doll to what looked like a very painful hair-styling session. Through the living room window, he could see his wife watching Alex, their son, trying out his new plastic tractor with the huge tires through the puffy mounds of sand in his sandbox. Seems like Christmas just keeps getting better. Magical time of the year with kids. Guess as long as you have them, you don’t outgrow it. Makes you feel special granting the kind of happiness and unbridled squealing excitement a few pieces of plastic can bring.
For some inexplicable reason, his mind traveled back to the Hutchinson situation. He had all but put it out of his mind today, figuring tomorrow was time enough to haul him up and start demanding answers. He would have been lucky to even scare up an interested administrator to handle the situation on Christmas Day. Starsky sure did pull out all the stops coming here and pleading Hutchinson’s case like that.
His thoughts were interrupted by his daughter coming to collect the doll house, which he helped her set up near the tree where the rest of her new treasures were scattered. Within moments, she was deeply involved in getting Barbie settled, and Simonetti finally had a few minutes to stretch out in his easy chair and relax. Picking up the morning paper he’d neglected until mid-afternoon, he started scanning the headlines. Nothing like the reality of the crime, death, and destruction going on in the world to shatter a little of the idealism of Christmas.
And you’re going to go into work in the morning and shoot down one of the good guys…a cop who’s busted some of the jerks who commit these crimes. What’s his offense? Making the wrong crime lord mad at him? Damn it, that’s Starsky talking. Rules are rules. I know there’s something about the spirit of the law as well as the letter of it…but if IA starts bending, the whole damned department will be in a state of anarchy. Somebody has to take on the unpopular job of being the watchdog. Watchdog for what?
“Damn it.” He tossed the paper aside and then looked at his startled little girl who was watching him with wide eyes. “Sorry, honey. Just didn’t like the ball game scores very well.” He tried his best smile, and she returned it, going back to her doll game.
I wouldn’t have gone after Hutchinson before unless I had strong evidence he was guilty. The circumstantial elements of Vanessa Hutchinson’s death had all pointed to her ex-husband. And if a cop is guilty of murder, he sure as hell doesn’t belong on the force. But what is Hutchinson guilty of this time? Being a victim? Getting sucked into the shit he and all the other cops like him wallow in every day trying to clean up society’s messes?
Working for IA hasn’t made me popular, but it usually has spared me a lot of job-related stress. You follow the book, and if someone falls outside the parameters, you bust him. No regrets, no exceptions. So why isn’t this one coming together in my head as a cut-and-dried case of chemical dependency hidden from the department? Why can’t I just take Starsky, Hutchinson, and their too-lenient Captain to task? Why in hell am I spending my day off worrying about it? Damn you, Starsky. It would have been simpler if you’d decked me this time. At least I wouldn’t have to lose any time thinking that over…
* * * *
They had no sooner sat down to an impressive spread of carved ham and all the trimmings when the doorbell rang. Hutch excused himself and went to answer it, not at all expecting to see Simonetti standing on the other side of it.
“I can guess why you’re here,” Hutch greeted, stepping aside for the other man to enter.
“Are you in the middle of dinner?” he asked, not sure why he cared.
“Just got started, actually. I was figuring you’d at least wait until tomorrow.”
“Take this.” Simonetti handed him a sealed envelope.
“I don’t understand—”
“Call it a Christmas present. I assure you, it’s the only one of its kind. Now, I have to get back home. My in-laws are due any minute.” He turned and walked partway out the door, leaving Hutch at a loss for words. “Incidentally, I can’t have it getting around the department that I’m handing out Christmas presents to detectives, so as far as I’m concerned, this never happened.” He hurried across the porch and down the front steps, walking briskly toward the steps that led to the sidewalk.
“I don’t underst—” Hutch was too late to get his attention, though he had been too stunned to speak before.
“What’s goin’ on?” Starsky joined him at the door, watching Simonetti steer his car back onto the road and head for home.
“Simonetti just dropped this off—said it was a Christmas present—and that ‘this never happened.’”
“Open it,” Starsky prodded, his heart moving up into his throat. Hutch opened the envelope and gulped at what he saw. It was the photo, with the message on the back reading: “Simonetti—for your information, re: Ken Hutchinson.”
“He said it was the only one of its kind—Starsk—do you know what this means?”
“It means Simonetti just washed his hands of the situation—and you’re off the hook,” Starsky summarized, grinning from ear to ear.
“But why? I mean, he’s been looking for a reason to nail one or both of us to the wall since that whole mess with Vanessa left him and Dryden looking like saps.”
“Maybe since his promotion came through a couple weeks ago, and he’s running the show in IA, he’s become a bigger person.”
“Starsky.”
“What?”
“What’d you do?” Hutch’s hands dropped to his sides, one of them still holding the photo as he pinned his partner with a knowing stare.
“What d’you mean? I didn’t do any—”
“Uh-uh. You had a hand in this, and I just wanna know if it’s gonna come crashing down around our ears.”
“You’re off the hook, babe. The newly promoted top dog in IA just handed you your freedom, buddy. And as long as Simonetti’s at the helm, you’ll probably never have to worry about it again, because if he pursued any charges against you in the future, he’d have to admit to having known since now and doing nothing about it.”
Starsky tried unsuccessfully to repress the satisfied little grin that was tweaking his mouth. “Do you realize what’s just happened? You’re free, buddy.” From his cool demeanor of almost non-reaction, Hutch lurched forward, grabbed his partner in a crushing bear-hug, lifting him momentarily off the ground. Starsky just laughed at the overjoyed assault as his feet were allowed back on the floor and he was released.
“Is everything all right out here?” Marion finally appeared in the doorway of the living room. Hutch paused before answering, then looked at Starsky, who was having a hard time stifling a smile of pure delight.
“Better than fine, Mom.” He took a few steps toward her. “I’m officially off the hook.” He grabbed his startled mother in a hug and spun her around twice. “The only people who know about…my situation are you, Dad, Starsky, Dobey, and an Internal Affairs Lieutenant who just handed me back the incriminating information, declining to do anything about it. Unless one of those people blows the whistle, which isn’t going to happen, it’s over.”
“Oh, Ken, that’s wonderful news!” she replied as he set her back on her feet again.
“I just can’t help but wonder what changed Simonetti’s mind,” Hutch said, his voice heavy with suspicion as he looked over his mother’s shoulder at Starsky, who simply shrugged in exaggerated innocence.
“Maybe he realized how wrong it would be to punish you for something that wasn’t your fault.” She linked her arm through Hutch’s as the three of them walked back toward the dining room.
“Knowing Simonetti, though, that’s pretty unlikely. But I guess I should just be happy I’m off the hook,” Hutch concluded, smiling at his mother, and then winking at Starsky. Whatever magic his partner had managed to work to set this situation right, he wasn’t about to push for answers. Starsky had pulled off the impossible, and there were no words to adequately express how grateful for that Hutch was. But then, they had a habit of “pulling off the impossible” for each other when the stakes were high enough.
CHAPTER 17
I can’t believe you love me,
I never thought you’d come,
I guess I misjudged love
Between a father and his son.
The Hutchinsons packed their rented Cadillac and prepared to head for the airport on the 27th of December. Marion and John had a staggering list of open houses and other galas to attend New Year’s Eve, and both wanted a little time to settle back home before the next holiday.
With the flight leaving early in the morning, Hutch didn’t expect to have much time to visit with his parents after they said their good-nights the previous evening. Both he and Starsky were due in to work, and their guests were bustling around with final packing. He was surprised to see his father knocking at his open bedroom door as he fastened his holster and reached for his jacket.
“Ken, do you have minute?”
“Sure, Dad. How about you?” Hutch checked his watch, as there appeared to be precious little spare time between that moment and when the elder Hutchinsons should be leaving for the airport.
“A couple,” he responded, smiling slightly, and taking a seat on the edge of the overstuffed chair in the corner of the room. Within moments, he spotted the new photo of Sandra. “May I?” He stood up and reached for it, and Hutch shrugged. His father took the photo off the shelf to look it over more carefully. “She was a beautiful girl, Ken.”
“Yes, she was.” Hutch sat on the foot of the bed and watched his father standing there, examining the photo as if he were trying to become acquainted with Sandra by staring at her face long enough. “Starsky took that photo and then got it framed for me,” he added.
“He does pretty well with his camera, doesn’t he?” John set the photo back on the shelf and returned to his chair.
“Yeah, very well. He’s been into photography for quite a few years now.”
“I’ve never been good at beating around the bush…I’m sorry we missed the funeral, son.”
“Why bring that up now?” Hutch asked, his voice neutral. He was beyond wanting to pick fights with his father. He was still curious why the other man felt it was worth discussing at this late date.
“I didn’t realize it would have any special meaning to you for us to be here.” He exhaled a little loudly. “I figured you’d want us here for the wedding and all, but I didn’t think it would be much help to you to have us here for the funeral.”
“And you were closing an important deal on a thoroughbred, right? Please don’t lie to me. Hey, if that was your priority over Sandra’s funeral, that’s your choice, and my choice to live with it or not. I’m living with it. I would just appreciate it if you didn’t lie to me about it.”
“How did you find out about that?” His father didn’t even attempt to deny it, or to bury himself more deeply in the lie of omission.
“Sally let something slip about the horse. Congratulations. I understand it was quite a coup…outbidding a bunch of other breeders for it.” Hutch’s tone again was not bitter or malicious, but almost conversational. He found himself strangely resilient when it came to his father’s ability to slight him or hurt his feelings. Maybe because they’re not my only family anymore. Maybe because I don’t think of Duluth as home anymore.
“It was.” John rubbed his chin, contemplating his next statement. “I admit that the business deal was part of it, Ken. But only insofar as I didn’t think it would console you that much to have us here. I figured Dave would be there for you, and—”
“He always is. I wouldn’t have made it through losing Sandra without him. But it would have been damned nice to see you guys show up there. I think it hit me harder…not having family there…because of Elizabeth.” His father’s face was temporarily blank and then the recognition came. Elizabeth Marie Hutchinson—the unborn child who would have been his first grandchild.
“It’s strange how you can embrace a concept in a few hours, own it, make it part of your life…” Hutch took a deep breath and released it slowly. “From the moment she told me that day, in my mind, we were a family—not just a couple anymore.” He smiled and walked over to the dresser and picked up the stuffed rabbit that always sat there.
“Starsky got this for Elizabeth that night—before it happened. I told him right after she told me, and he bought this that night.” Suddenly thoughts of a giggling baby amidst what would have been an absurd bonanza of Christmas gifts, Sandra sitting near the tree, holding their daughter and making her smile for the camera flooded into his mind…Hutch felt the shudder from deep within somewhere, and was stunned that he could still find tears to shed for his lost family. It seemed like he’d used up all there were. “I’m sorry.” He pulled himself together, not surprised to see his father look as uncomfortable as he did sympathetic. Men crying wasn’t a concept John Hutchinson was ever comfortable with, and he couldn’t expect him to have changed much in recent years.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Hutch lied, pulling himself together quickly. I feel wonderful, Dad. My fiancée’s dead, my child is gone, and I just went through the first set of holidays thinking about everything I’ve lost…I feel great. He suddenly realized how spoiled he’d become from Starsky’s immediate, sensitive reactions to his grief.
“I don’t know as I can ever say anything to make up for that…for not being here. But that’s not to say we didn’t care, son. If I’d realized it was important to you for us to come—”
“You’d have dropped everything? Come on, Dad, I know what a deal like that means to you.”
“Well, maybe I’ve realigned a few of my priorities on this trip.” He shifted in his chair a little uneasily. “Look, I’m a businessman. I’m not going to lie to you that closing a deal like that is what drives me, motivates me. Your life is here, separate from ours. You haven’t exactly visited often—and we sure as hell don’t get many invitations from you to come out here. Do you know how it feels to know your son nearly died and you only heard about it after the fact?” John referred back to Hutch’s brush with both the plague and botulism from contaminated soup. In both cases, Starsky had been discouraged by Hutch to call his parents. Hutch either didn’t call them at all, as in the case of the botulism, or only called them when he was up and around again, as he had when he was released from the hospital following the plague.
“There wasn’t much point in upsetting you for nothing.”
“Nothing? Look, those were your calls to make, but it was obvious that when a crisis arose in your life, you leaned on Dave to get through it. And that’s fine. But why would we think you’d need us this time when you never did before?”
“Things are…complicated with us. When I was sick, I wasn’t up to it. I came close to dying both times, and it was quite a few days before I got my strength back. I couldn’t argue about my job and my lifestyle and how much of a crushing disappointment I was.”
“Where in the hell do you get this half-assed notion of yours that you’re some kind of disappointment to us?”
“Maybe because I never made it to number one!” Hutch shot back. “I’m not a lawyer or a corporate big shot or taking over the family ranch. I divorced my socially-acceptable wife—”
“Vanessa?” John replied, raising his eyebrows. “If you hadn’t divorced that bitch I’d’a killed her. Hell, I’d rather you’d married Dave.” John looked up at his son, and suddenly both laughed a little. His socially correct father suggesting that having his son marry another man would be preferable to bringing Vanessa home illustrated what he really thought of the vituperous witch Hutch had attempted to build a life with in his earlier years.
“I’ve asked but he keeps turning me down,” Hutch replied, still laughing.
“Holdin’ out for one with better legs, huh?” John retorted, seeming to relax into the joke now, a little of the tension leaving his large frame.
“And he doesn’t like my cooking.”
“What about Cecile?”
“I like Cecile. I’ll probably keep seeing her as long as she’s interested. I guess I just don’t have the feeling back yet. I can’t…let go of Sandra just yet.”
“That’s understandable.” John paused for a moment, and there was a slightly uneasy silence before he continued. “There’s something we need to get straight here,” John began, his tone serious. “You have this notion that you’re a disappointment. Maybe there was a time when you were. I can’t lie that I’ve always wanted the best for you. The best education, the best career, the best future—and in my opinion, you weren’t getting that. Weren’t even going for it. I guess the old habit of prodding your kids to succeed dies hard. But I am very proud of what you’ve achieved, and proud of your courage. I know I wouldn’t have the nerve to strap one of those things on my body and go poking around the inner city,” John concluded, gesturing toward the gun in Hutch’s holster.
“You mean that? You’re seriously proud of me—this isn’t something Mom put you up to?”
“A lot of people who know your mother might be shocked to hear this, but I do still have a functional mind of my own,” John replied, smiling a little. “No, son, I’m just telling you the truth. Maybe I’m learning that you’re not a kid anymore, so it’s up to me to get to know my son, the man, and quit trying to raise you.”
“I wish you didn’t have to go back so soon.”
“Well, you know your mother and her parties.” John stood and straightened to his full height. Hutch rose from his perch on the end of the bed, his own stature falling only an inch below his father’s. He pulled his father into a bear hug, not knowing if that was what the older man would want, but not caring. It seemed they’d been miscommunicating and not communicating long enough.
“Thanks for coming,” he said quietly, not sure how to put all of it into words. Thanks for saying you’re proud of me, and really meaning it…and for accepting me the way I am, where I am…for not putting me down anymore because I’m not as rich and influential as some of your friends’ kids.
“I’m glad you asked,” John responded, returning the pressure briefly before pulling back. “You be careful out there. Don’t be a dead hero, son.” He patted the side where the gun rested, and then turned and walked briskly out of the room.
* * * *
Spring came early in 1982. Nowhere else on Cherry Street was the arrival of the season more immediately evident that it was at the old Oliver house. Nursery trucks delivered the items Starsky selected with the gift certificate from Hutch’s parents, working diligently at building his garden, complete with the little fountain. He replaced rotting wood and slathered white paint on the aged gazebo. In his spare time, he joined Mel Pomeroy in the arduous task of repainting the large house next door, helping Mel convince Sally that yellow would be as agreeable a color as peach. For this, Mel was eternally grateful.
Hutch took over the landscaping of shrubs and plantings around the house. With the book Starsky had given him for Christmas close at hand, he also established an herb and vegetable garden near Starsky’s more ornate but less edible garden.
The new lawn was finally put in during the month of May, and while the second floor still needed decorating and the attic was far from being cleaned out or finished as planned, the garage was still leaning precariously to one side and the plumbing was now commencing an interesting symphony of banging pipes, Starsky and Hutch were fairly pleased with themselves at their progress with their “investment property.” Hutch had ceased even discussing resale values, much to Starsky’s infinite relief.
* * * *
Simonetti continued running Internal Affairs with an iron hand, but he never brought up the subject of the photo or Hutch’s addiction again. Dryden still worked in the division, with a different partner while he worked toward his own promotion goals. Hutch wondered if it was a curse or a blessing to be able to dissolve a partnership that way and not care anymore than those two seemed to care. And is it a curse or a blessing to care too much?
Just then, the squad room doors burst open and Starsky raced to his desk, waving a business envelope under his nose.
“Read it and weep!” he announced triumphantly.
Hutch immediately noticed the return address from the university where Starsky had started classes during the Winter semester. These had to be the much anticipated grades. His partner had been making runs home to check the mailbox ever since he’d taken the final exams for his psychology class and required biology class. The psychology class had given him few problems outside of finding the time to do the required reading, but the biology class, a general education requirement for all students seeking degrees, had hit on one of Starsky’s worst subjects. Hutch had been enlisted for many hours of tutoring and study assistance, an activity which had caused the chess set to be evicted from the table in the library for most of the semester, replaced by textbooks and reams of notes.
Hutch opened the envelope now, judging by Starsky’s demeanor that it must be good news. He’d gone into the final exam with a C average in the class, so the final would be either his undoing or his salvation.
The psychology class was an “A,” which didn’t surprise Hutch at all. The biology class had yielded a “B.”
“Congratulations, partner! Guess that all-nighter paid off on the final.” Hutch tucked the paper back in the envelope and handed it back to Starsky.
“Couldn’t’a done it without my tutor,” Starsky said happily, tucking the envelope in his jacket pocket. “I guess I only have about 100 credits to go now,” he added, snorting a little laugh.
“You’ll get there, buddy. This is a hell of a start.”
“My GPA looks pretty good now—I got A’s in those Criminology classes I took a couple years ago, and my advisor said those’ll go toward my degree too.”
“I think we ougtta celebrate. Unless you wanted to do something with Christine tonight.”
“Don’t think that’ll be happening again soon. Guess I’ll have to settle for the cute brunette in my psychology class—she’s signed up for the same class I am next semester.”
“Back up. What happened with Christine?”
“Well, I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but I guess things got a little, ah, interesting during her last stakeout with Shemanski.”
“You mean they’re…”
“Until Dobey catches them, they are—why do you think they volunteer for all those dead-end stakeouts? Christine told me this morning.”
“Whew. Oh, well, I guess it beats five hours of card tricks to pass the time.”
“Yeah, but you keep tellin’ me I’m not a good kisser, remember?” Starsky teased, amused at Hutch’s sweeping scan of the squadroom to determine who might have heard the remark.
“And you don’t exactly fill out your sweaters the way Christine does, either.” Hutch was grinning a little as he stacked up the papers on his desk in preparation to leave. “How about steak and lobster—pull all the stops—my treat,” Hutch stated, rising and leading the way to the door, which he ultimately held for his partner as he passed through it. Together, they walked down the hall and toward the exit.
“Don’t toy with me that way,” Starsky admonished, laughing a little. He noticed Hutch’s expression was still sincere. “You’re going to treat me to steak and lobster? What gives?” he asked, incredulous.
Hutch flopped an arm over his partner’s shoulders.
“Let’s just say I’m counting my blessings, huh?”
Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever gonna make it home again,
It’s so far and out of sight,
I really need someone to talk to and nobody else
Knows how to comfort me tonight.
Snow is cold, rain is wet,
Chills my soul right to the marrow,
I won’t be happy ’til I see you again,
‘Til I’m home again and feeling right.
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