Not Again Intro
Not Again Intro
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NOT AGAIN
By Tiger INTRODUCTION
Disclaimer: The characters of Starsky and Hutch do not belong to me. They are the property of Spelling-Goldberg Productions. These stories have been written for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is expressed, implied or intended.
Writing Credits: The storyline contained within the Prologue and all of the characters and images relating to the murder of Dobey’s police partner, Elmo Jackson, and his history in becoming a police captain are taken directly from a Fanfic piece entitled “Partners and Friends” by MysticWhim and Hutchlover. These original concepts by MysticWhim and Hutchlover are used with their permission. They wrote a very believable version of Jackson’s murder and I saw no reason to reinvent the wheel since they did a commendable job in portraying that event. I have taken some liberties with small details in their account and with their timeline, but otherwise I wish to give credit where credit is due. It is not necessary to read “Partners and Friends” in order to understand my story, but I do recommend reading their Fanfic if you get a chance. I also thank Hutchlover for taking the time to serve as a Beta Reader for this story.
This piece is my first attempt at Fan Fiction. I wrote it as a response to a forum discussion at the Starsky and Hutch Gallery website (http://www.sh-gallery.com/index.php). The forum issue was a poll requesting input concerning the bond between Starsky and Hutch posted on October 8, 2005. Since there seemed to be an interest in exploring their relationship, I wanted to write a piece that would answer some of the issues raised through the responses to the poll and the requests for stories that specifically addressed the development of their intense bond. I decided to reflect on their relationship using a familiar character that knew them and interacted with them closely and so I chose to tell their story through the eyes of Captain Harold C. Dobey.
Dobey is a useful character because according to S and H cannon, Dobey’s police partner was murdered and so he knows first hand what that close partnership is like and he also knows what it is like to lose it. If we experience Starsky and Hutch’s relationship through Dobey’s perspective, we can understand the impact of the death of a police partner without creating a new death story. Moreover, I figured that the best place to explore the intensity of that relationship is in a context in which one of the detectives is threatened with the death of the other, so I chose to use the events in the final episode of Season Four, “Sweet Revenge”, to serve as the environment for these reflections.
I ask your patience while reading this piece. This is not an action story. This is an emotionally intensive reflection and analysis of the bond between police partners, especially Starsky and Hutch, as experienced by Captain Dobey during the 48-hour period of the events during Sweet Revenge. I do spend a great deal of time on Captain Dobey in this story and I felt that this was necessary to do so in order to establish the context for these musings, but I ask you to use your imagination and understand that for every thought and experience that Dobey has, it is meant to imply what Hutch might experience if Starsky died.
To highlight the actual lines from the original episode, I have used a script-style of writing. Quotes from Sweet Revenge are designated by the following format: (Speaker) Line spoken. --Tiger Barclay-Wells
PROLOGUE
(May 14, 1971)
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…Ker-chunk!
She had punched the time clock at precisely 5:00am to begin her morning shift at the meatpacking plant. It was her job to make sure that the refrigerated, warehouse-like rooms, as well as all of the removable hooks and equipment, were cleaned and disinfected for a day of butchering, stripping, and prepping beef. On that particular day, she had her work cut out for her.
The police report stated that at around 5:15am, after she had gone to the locker room to put on her green smock and hairnet and stopped by the janitorial closet to obtain her cleaning supplies, she had gone to the drain room where she discovered a very odd type of meat hanging from one of the hooks.
A nude, thin black man, in his late thirties or early forties, dangled over the cement floor by a large meat hook embedded in his back and sticking out through his chest.
When the police arrived, they had noted the dried blood that was caked on the left side of his face from a small head wound and the lines of coagulated blood that snaked down his back and ended in a large pool of dried blood on the cold, hard floor.
Even though the body did not have any I.D., the Bay City police did not have any difficulty making a positive identification. This was one of their own: a well-respected Detective Lieutenant from the 10th district named Elmo Jackson whose police partner was Detective Lieutenant Harold Calvin Dobey.
The two detectives had been working undercover at the meatpacking plant in order to put the finger on the drug running activities of a Mr. Neville Stryker. Stryker was using his ownership of the plant to launder funds from his illegal operations and to smuggle cocaine. Jackson had managed to get incriminating evidence on the drug ring by working for Mr. Stryker as his accountant under the pseudonym of “George Johnson.” Dobey had tried to learn what he could about Stryker’s operations by working on the plant loading dock as ‘Rod Carlson’.
Lieutenant Jackson did his job well, but his cover was eventually blown by one of Stryker’s men. When Stryker learned that ‘George Johnson’ was actually a cop and could probably not be bribed, he figured that his new accountant had become too much of a liability and therefore had to be taken out of the equation. Stryker had immediately called in a ‘specialist’ to take care of this problem and to leave a clear warning to any other cops who felt it was their sworn duty to meddle in his private business.
It was a beautiful day the morning the phone rang in Lieutenant Dobey’s home. He was abruptly awakened from a sound sleep in time to learn that his partner, Elmo, had been grisly murdered. Dobey rushed down to the meatpacking plant to see what he could do, but his police superior, Captain Hursh, had ordered him to remain outside during the crime scene investigation. Hursh feared that since it was his partner who was murdered, Dobey was too emotionally close to the victim to be objective in his police work on this case. Dobey knew that his captain was probably trying to protect him from the horror of the circumstances of his partner’s death, but forcing him to watch passively as his fellow officers carried out their duties was the worst thing that Hursh could have done to him. Dobey already felt powerless and violated by the jarring absence of his best friend. The fact that he was being prevented from trying to do something about bringing these murderers to justice added insult to injury by shoving the reality of the tragic loss in his face.
Dobey and Jackson had known each other for almost two decades. During the course of their friendship and eventual partnership, hardly a day had gone by without some sort of interaction between them. The fact that Elmo felt so far away from him at the moment made him want to interact with his partner all the more—somehow—even if it was only investigating his murder.
That morning, as Dobey sat watching the frenetic activity associated with the investigation of a murdered cop, he had sighed heavily and then looked at his watch. It was a little before noon. Although he generally went “by the book,” his nerves had gotten the better of him and he decided that he couldn’t sit around waiting outside any longer. He was going to ignore his captain’s orders and do what he could for his partner, no matter what the consequences.
Dobey walked past the uniformed police officers busy with crowd control, ducked under the crime scene barrier, and dodged his way around the various city and county officials in the midst of conducting their intense and serious business. As he entered the meatpacking plant he passed a team of forensic specialists exiting the building who had just concluded their role at the crime scene. He followed the trail of detectives and police personnel to the drain room where Elmo’s body still hung. As he walked by his colleagues, he quietly perceived the sympathy and concern for him on their faces, but he dared not meet their gaze lest he lose hold of his wavering composure.
When he reached the drain room, he became aware of the many eyes that suddenly focused upon him as he entered upon the macabre scene, but he really wasn’t concerned at the moment about their reaction to his presence. All Dobey saw was Elmo. As he approached his partner he saw that a uniformed officer named David Starsky was in the process of placing a couple of crates underneath Elmo’s hanging body. When the creates had been set in place, Officer Starsky and his partner, an older gentleman named Sam Wilcox, were about to step up onto the crates in order to lower Elmo’s body, but Captain Hursh, whose back was to Dobey, ordered the uniformed officers to stand down so that he could remove the martyred police lieutenant himself. Just before Hursh mounted the crates, Dobey walked up behind Hursh, placed his hand on his captain’s shoulder, and turned him around to face him.
Dobey never forgot the momentary look of shock and horror that he saw in his captain’s expression when he found himself face-to-face with his grief stricken lieutenant.
The hoarse tremor in Hursh’s voice was evident as he exclaimed, “Harold, I ordered you to stay out!”
Dobey had calmly and resolutely replied, “Captain, we’ll do this together.”
Seeing that his lieutenant was undaunted in his purpose, Hursh relented and both men ascended the makeshift steps together. Dobey held and lifted his partner’s body as Captain Hursh arduously removed the meat hook upon which the hapless detective had been impaled. When Hursh finished, he gently lowered Elmo’s body onto Dobey's awaiting shoulder.
As Dobey stepped down from the crates, Officer Starsky approached him with a blanket with which to cover Elmo’s naked body. Dobey was deeply touched by the officer’s tender attention for his partner and met Starsky’s eyes briefly with a glance of teary gratitude. In turn, Starsky’s face betrayed the depth of his sympathy and sorrow for the lieutenant’s tragic loss. Upon seeing his own anguish mirrored in the young man’s features, Dobey heaved a heavy sigh and managed to offer Starsky a wan smile as the officer finished his ministrations. With Elmo securely ensconced in the enfolding blanket, Dobey solemnly carried his precious load past the somber witnesses, out of the frigid warehouse, and into the sunlit parking lot where he placed his esteemed passenger in the care of the county coroner.
Captain Hursh had followed his lieutenants’ procession and now stood by his side as Dobey watched his partner disappear into the coroner’s van and out of his sight forever.
The next thing Dobey recalled was sitting in Hursh’s car next to his captain and wiping his partner’s blood off of his hands with a white handkerchief.
The autopsy had revealed that Elmo had been struck first on the left side of his head from behind. Before Dobey came to discover the details and circumstances of his partner’s death, he prayed to God that Elmo was dead before they hung him on the meat hook, but when the autopsy report came out the evidence had indicated otherwise. At that point, the only scenario for which Dobey could hope was that his partner was at least unconscious when he had been crucified upon the huge barb.
Whatever the details, as far as Dobey was concerned, the upshot of the whole affair was that some sick hoodlums had hung his best friend on a meat hook and left him to die alone in a cold meatpacking plant. Fourteen years of watching each other's backs and caring more deeply about each other than either one ever fully acknowledged was all shot to hell in a heartbeat just because some greedy bastard had a cash flow problem.
After that day, Dobey refused to work with another police partner.
At Hursh’s recommendation, Dobey took and passed the Captain’s Exam. He was content to stay at a desk job until a captain’s position became available in the 9th district.
Elmo had died that night by being skewered through the heart and slowly bleeding to death; ever since then, Harold Dobey had lived—also skewered through the heart and slowly bleeding to death.
Drip, drip, drip…
From that moment on, Dobey existed in a nightmare, bereft of pillows.
Chapter ONE The Nightmare
Squeak, squeak, squeak…
Somewhere in the blackness a horrible grating noise emanated from within the chamber. The bone-chilling squeaking assaulted Dobey’s senses as if countless fingernails were being simultaneously scraped against a huge blackboard. He tried to figure out where he was, but everything around him was pitch black. Without warning, an alarm bell pealed forth a continuous stream of cacophonous sound so earsplitting that he was afraid that the sound might cause his head to explode. Grinding the heels of his hands into his ears, he emitted a shrill and deafening scream. All at once, everything around him became deadly silent and still. He stood momentarily transfixed in the inky darkness until his suspended animation was interrupted by shafts of intense light erupting through a riddling of tiny holes in the walls of what appeared to be a tomb-like enclosure.
Dobey scanned his eyes around the cramped and foul-smelling cubicle trying to take in his surroundings. How did he get here? And more importantly, how was he going to get out?
When his eyes finally adjusted to the intensity of the thin luminous beams, he discovered that he was facing the back wall of a small prison cell. The accommodations were appallingly miserable. The gray, pock marked wall was decorated only by a meager, dirty, and blanketless cot; a dingy, cracked sink; and a rusty, leaking toilet bowl which protruded from the cinder block.
“This is definitely not a place to call ‘home’,” Dobey mused to himself. “How could a person ever manage to live in this God-forsaken hell hole with nothing but bare-bones necessities—no, not even that!”
Upon further reflection, he deduced that this was a private accommodation. There was no sign indicating the possibility of a cellmate. He thought to himself that perhaps this particular cell was used for prisoners who were condemned to solitary confinement.
At this point, something on the wall caught his attention. Taking a closer look, he noticed that there were symbols carved into the wall face just above the sink. He peered intently at the strange hieroglyphics in a heroic attempt to decipher them, but the harder he squinted his eyes to make out what they were, the more difficult it became to focus on the markings themselves. He did not know why, but for some reason he was aware that these symbols had a deep significance to him and that his life depended on knowing what they meant. However, try as he might, the images that had been carved into the lifeless cement continued to elude his recognition. Frustrated to the point of tears and desperate to know the meaning of the elusive etchings, Dobey finally slammed his fist into them with a bone-crunching fury, smashing the carvings into tiny pieces. When he extracted his balled hand from the fragmented impression he had made in the stone barrier, he fully expected to see blood pouring from his hand in self-inflicted damage, but his hand was intact. While he was examining the damage, his ears were assailed once more by the haunting, raspy squeaks. This time they were coming from a position directly in front of him. Dobey looked up in the direction of the sound and was shocked to find that a small, rectangular bathroom mirror, swinging back and forth from a hook embedded in the wall, had now replaced the carved symbols above the sink.
While he stared at the swinging mirror, trying to figure what to make of the looking glass in front of him, he caught fleeting glimpses of his stunned face in its reflection. Not sure of what else to do, he reached out his hand and took hold of the mirror in order to halt its pendulous momentum. Upon grasping the mirror, he looked deeply into the reflected face of the man staring back at him. The face was not his. It belonged to Lieutenant Elmo Jackson, his police partner and best friend. As soon as Dobey recognized his partner’s face, the mirror shattered explosively, sending tiny fragments of glass in all directions. He instinctively shielded his face with his hands to protect his eyes. When he brought his hands down from his face, he noticed that drops of blood were falling into the basin. He slowly turned his palms over and saw that shards of the mirror were jutting out from the back of his hand. He winced as he attempted to pull them out, but each time he touched the fragments they buried themselves further into his wounds. Finally, he took out a white handkerchief and tried to wipe off the blood, but nothing he did was able to quell the flow of crimson droplets that poured from his flesh and disappeared into the dark recesses of the open drain.
Dobey had to find a way to make his bleeding stop. He looked around him to see what else he could find in the cell to assist him in extracting the broken mirror from his flesh, but when his eyes focused on the wall above the sink he saw that the mirror had disappeared. In its place were the same enigmatic symbols that had been there before. This time, however, he could clearly see that someone had gouged seven deep hash marks into the wall. Dobey recalled that prisoners sometimes keep track of the passage of time by making small carvings in the cell wall and so he figured that whoever had engraved these slashes in the wall had left them as a witness to a lengthy stay in this cramped and squalid dwelling.
Seven. Days? A week, perhaps. Months? Years?
While he was thinking about it, he wondered about his own time in the cell. How long had he been there? He glanced down at his watch. The time on the clock face revealed 12:00. He wondered if the time was midnight or noon. There had been darkness in the beginning, but his cell was still flooded with thin beams of sun-intense light. While he was examining his watch, he also noticed that the shards of mirror in the back of his hand had now mysteriously disappeared and were replaced by seven scars identical to the markings on the wall. He looked at the back of his other hand and saw that a duplicate pattern of seven scars was embedded there as well. Once Dobey considered his own seven-fold scars he intuitively knew what they meant.
“Seven years. That’s seven years bad luck for a broken mirror,” He realized, “Seven years in solitary confinement…”
Drip, drip, drip…
A steady, and greatly amplified, liquid plopping sound began to echo throughout the cell. His head pounded with the hollow reverberations making him fear that he would slowly go insane by the constant dripping of this Chinese Water Torture. From where was the sound coming? Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, he looked down at the floor and observed that a constant flow of rusty water was bleeding out of the toilet and falling perpetually onto the cement floor, forming a gradually expanding dark red puddle.
Seeing the dark red puddle filled Dobey with an overwhelming dread. He had to get out of that cell, now!
Frantically examining his surroundings in search of an exit, Dobey noticed that the walls on both sides of the cell were barren cinder block, so he turned around to view, for the first time, the opposite side of the cell. It, too, was a cinder block wall, but in its center was a sturdy metal door with a letter-slot like opening about halfway up the door, probably intended to allow passage for a small food tray. He walked over to the door, leaned over, and peered through the tiny slot. On the other side of the door there was nothing but blackness.
How was he going to open the door? When he examined the old-fashioned jail lock, he was surprised to find that it had a skeleton key projecting from it. Apparently, his prison cell was locked from the inside. He was afraid to unlock the door. What would he find on the other side? Outside his cell, it looked as if there was only an empty void. Perhaps the prison cell was locked from the inside to protect him from something on the other side of the door, rather than to prevent him from leaving. However, anything had to be better than staying here in this lonely cell and watching his lifeblood drain away. He decided to face the darkness.
Dobey’s hands were shaking as he twisted the skeleton key and turned over the old lock with a loud clunk. The door creaked stridently as it swung outward on its hinges into the dark corridor. He poked his head out into the hallway and peered down the corridor. There was an eerie glow emanating from an open doorway at the end of the hallway. Hmmm…there was a light at the end of the tunnel. That didn’t sound too promising, but he was strangely drawn to discover what lay beyond that portal.
Before crossing the threshold of the prison cell he took a deep breath (as if it was going to be his last) and stepped hesitatingly into the dim passageway. He kept his eyes focused on the faint luminescence at the termination of the corridor while he trudged deliberately forward.
Bang, bang, bang…
The sound of his footsteps reverberated against the hard, cold walls of the dank chamber and echoed throughout his shivering soul as he made his way towards the radiant glow beckoning through the awaiting entry.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
Dobey glanced down at his watch again. It was still midnight…or noon. Whichever. Yet the ticking sounds were not springing from his watch—they were originating from whatever was on the other side of the doorway in front of him. The ticking grew steadily louder as he continued to venture forward.
When he reached the doorway he paused briefly at the entrance.
“If I enter here, my life will be changed forever,” declared Dobey with a grim finality. While stepping through the gaping doorway he had the strangest thought…
Instead of an entrance, I wonder if this is an exit…
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…Wham!
He could have sworn that was the sound of a door being slammed shut.
Dobey stood motionless for a second before trying to take in his new surroundings—a dark, cavernous cement chamber lit only by small spotlights hanging straight down from an unseen ceiling. This gave the effect of standing in the midst of a forest of “trees” whose trunks were made of pure illumination.
Swish!
A powerful wind whipped forcefully behind him. He spun around to see what had almost hit him, but nothing was there.
Swoosh!
A gargantuan metal pendulum, similar to one that might be found in a grandfather clock, was swinging in large arcs across his field of view. He could not tell its actual size because it was only visible when it passed through the columns of light, but he figured that it was at least the entire height of the chamber itself. Right now, the pendulum was swinging at a high rate of speed in front of the door through which he had just come and was blocking his retreat. He glanced at the doorway to see if he could manage to dodge the pendulum in time to return to his cell, but it was too late. The doorway itself had now completely vanished. He was now trapped in this room. It felt as if his time was running out. He turned back around to face the center of the room.
Swish!
As he was turning back around, the pendulum nearly clipped Dobey’s right shoulder. That was too close for comfort! It appeared that not only was the pendulum wildly swinging from side to side, but it was also moving progressively closer towards the center of the room with each oscillation. Unless he could find a way to get behind the pendulum to escape its forward march, he had no choice but to stay far ahead of it. Right now, he couldn’t see it coming and so he couldn’t get out of its way—time was simply pressing in upon him.
He scurried towards the center of the room. As he approached the core, he saw that one of the light beams was red instead of white.
Squeak, squeak, squeak…
There was that horrific noise again.
In the center of the red light beam there hung a side of beef that was swinging on a large metal hook suspended from the unseen ceiling. Dobey approached the dangling meat and painstakingly took it down from its mount.
The next thing he knew, Dobey was cradling the slaughtered carcass in his arms and howling like a wounded animal as copious and unquenchable tears burst forth from the depths of his being. His tears fell like rain into a relentlessly widening scarlet pool upon the cold cement floor. Blood? From where was this blood flowing? For a moment, Dobey thought that its source might be from the butchered animal, but looking down he saw that the front of his shirt was becoming sopping wet with a slowly spreading vermilion stain.
There was a gaping hole in his chest. Apparently, his heart had been hacked in two.
By the time he raised his head again, he saw that the pendulum had caught up with him…
His time was up. His luck had run out…
…tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…RRRRRRRRING!
CHAPTER TWO The Cost of The Oath
RRRRRRRRING!...
The deafening clangs of the alarm clock struck the early morning hour and then clobbered the inside of Dobey’s head just for good measure. His head pounded as he groggily fumbled for the marauding timepiece and slapped its hysterical ruckus into a muted silence.
RRRRRRRRING!...
Dobey nearly jumped out of his skin.
The bedside phone had conspired with the alarm clock and was now chiming in with its own blaring bells.
“Not again,” growled Dobey.
A phone call this early in the morning was never a good sign. He had hardly enough time to steady himself in anticipation of impending bad news as he picked up the receiver…
It was the painters. They wanted to let Dobey know that they would probably finish the second coat in squad room 519 at Police Headquarters sooner than they planned and wondered if they could get started on priming Dobey’s office right away.
Dobey was livid.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing calling me at my home at this time in the morning?!” he bellowed. “No, you may not prime my office when you are finished with the damn squad room…Why? Because I’m going to be working in my office today—that’s why! I told you I’d be out of my office on Thursday. This is Tuesday. And don’t call me at this number again!”
Dobey slammed the phone receiver onto its cradle with a loud clang. He swung his bulk out from under the covers and sat on the edge of his bed while he rubbed his face and then ran his fingers through his hair. He sighed as he donned his wristwatch and noted the date on the edge of the clock face. May fifteenth.
“Harold, what’s all that yelling about?” It was the voice of his wife, Edith. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Nothing to worry about, Edith,” Dobey gruffly retorted. “It was someone from the painting contractor’s office whose head wasn’t screwed on straight. I wish the City would hire some competent workers instead of trying to save money by hiring these idiots who don’t know what they’re doing!”
“Shhhh, Sweetheart. Keep your voice down or you’ll wake the kids.”
The kids eventually have to get up for school anyway,” huffed Dobey. “I don’t see how they get away with sleeping in so late. They’re always rushing around at the last moment to get to the bus on time.”
“Gee, Harold, it sure sounds as if you got up on the wrong side of the bed. Come on, buck up! It’s a beautiful day outside!”
Dobey just shrugged and sighed heavily. Edith, sensing that something was wrong, came and sat down next to her husband on the bed.
“Harold, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” mumbled Dobey, “Not a damn thing.”
“Harold…,” Edith said as she looked intently into her husband’s eyes. She knew him too well to let him get away with shrugging her off.
Dobey also knew his wife well enough to realize that she would continue to pester him until he told her what was bothering him, so it was best to confess now and get it over with.
“I had that nightmare again,” he admitted.
“It’s right on time,” replied Edith.
“Yesterday was the exact date,” declared Dobey. “It’s been seven years…no, eight. Elmo died in 1971, so it’s been eight years—eight years of that damn nightmare haunting me every anniversary of his death.”
“I know that it is a hard time of year for you, Dear,” offered Edith. “Is there something I can do for you?”
Dobey gazed into Edith’s loving eyes and smiled. He gave her a light kiss on the lips.
“No, just keep putting up with me. I know that’s already a lot to ask.”
Edith smiled back at Dobey and patted him on the knee as she stood up.
“I’m going to go and see if the kids are awake yet. I’ll have breakfast ready in a half hour.”
“Okay,” said Dobey as he watched Edith exit the bedroom.
Dobey got up wearily from the bed and made his way to the master bath where he began his daily ritual ablutions. He hoped that the promise of a new day would enable him to shake off the hideous flashbacks that were presently infesting his spirit, but the sunlight streaming in through the chinks in the bathroom blinds was not able to dispel the lingering murkiness of his recent dreamscape. Unfortunately, the vestiges of his nocturnal horror show were only echoes of a more deeply embedded reality—the ghosts of his past that had claimed squatter’s rights in his mind and now refused to vacate the premises.
The gruesome memories of Elmo’s death had continued to haunt him since that day in 1971. It wasn’t the gory details of the murder scene that plagued him. In all of his days working on the police force he had witnessed enough human violence and carnage to last him a lifetime. No, the worst horror of that day was that the perpetrators had treated Elmo like a piece of meat. His best friend’s life was out-and-out wasted as a mere afterthought to a bunch of criminals’ twisted schemes.
At some level, Dobey was aware that Elmo’s life had not really been wasted—cops got killed on the job and that’s all there was to it. That was the potential cost of taking The Oath. As cops, they were armed civil servants, dedicating themselves to “serve and protect” the population of their fair City—not from a foreign enemy, but one from within.
There was something honorable in that. There was something honorable in serving justice and protecting the freedom of others to enjoy the benefits of human society. Yet there was also a strange irony in this self-sacrificial work; in order to carry out their police duties, they were in constant jeopardy of personally losing out on the very things that they were striving to protect.
While people slept soundly in their beds, Elmo and he would be out on patrol in the middle of the night, exposing themselves to constant danger from humans who preyed on other humans. Some of these offenders did what they did on purpose, others did not, but what they all had in common was that they did not care about what happened to the police officers that were sent to deal with them. Being a police officer meant carrying a badge, and with it, came the grave responsibility of being an authority of the law. No one cared if you had feelings. No one cared if you were a spouse, a sibling, a child, a friend, or even if you were a human being. All that these lawbreakers knew was that you were trying to stop them from doing what they wanted to be doing and that made you the target of their frustrated impotence.
Dobey had often wished that when young, eager, and idealistic souls signed up for a dangerous occupation like law enforcement they could just stop having feelings and needs. In this line of work these were simply a liability. The work itself was intense and exciting, but attached to this occupational thrill ride was the constant threat of death.
In the beginning, Dobey accepted that fact and over the years, there had been many good reasons to put his life on the line. Yet, somewhere along the way death had begun to worm its way into his soul. It wasn’t that he feared his own demise, but the weight of accumulated losses from the deaths of his fellow officers and friends had begun to weigh upon him. It was bad enough that police casualties often decimated their families. However, the worst part of it was attending another funeral with his partner and helplessly witnessing one more devastated police officer standing over the grave of a slain partner. Each time an officer was buried, Dobey would glance over at Elmo and wonder when it would be his time to watch the gravediggers bury half of his heart in the cold earth. Each police tragedy that invaded his life underscored his uncertain hold on a ‘happily-ever-after’ and dragged him closer and closer to the brink of his own inner perdition—the possibility of losing a man who meant more than the world to him. He had tried to get used to the idea of one day losing the life support of his partner’s presence, but he had failed miserably in this regard. When his worst fears were finally realized on that Friday morning in 1971, Dobey found himself swimming in a sea of grief.
He was a man of faith, so he tenaciously held onto the belief that death would not have the final word in the big scheme of things, but he seriously wondered how he was supposed to manage in this life, now that his soul had been drastically amputated. Riddled repeatedly with pain from the accruing losses of fallen fellow officers, which now included the death of his long-time partner and closest friend, Dobey was now tempted to yield to a pessimistic fatalism that touted a bitter slogan of condemning human attachments altogether; but of course, Dobey couldn’t turn himself off from being human.
The reality was that Dobey did get attached. He got attached to Elmo and no amount of professionalism could have saved him from becoming so even if he had desired it. The very nature of police partnerships created an atmosphere in which souls became welded together permanently. Elmo and he had worked closely with each other for fourteen years. They continually clocked over seventy hours per week together (including extra time for special assignments, undercover work, and stakeouts, plus time to unwind with each other after their shift). There was something in all of that face-to-face interaction that generated a fierce, indissoluble relational bond.
Dobey really couldn’t really put his finger on what it was about his relationship with Elmo that felt as natural (and necessary) as breathing air, but oftentimes he had felt closer to Elmo than to his wife or children. This truth sometimes bothered him, but there was nothing he could do to counteract it. It wasn’t that he disliked Edith, his dear wife of many years, and he did not disregard his children on purpose. As far as his family was concerned, he was sure that he would have gladly sacrificed himself for them. He wished repeatedly that he could spend more time with them, but that was the point. He spent more time with Elmo.
Dobey was with Elmo seven times more often than he was with his own family. For most of the day, Elmo was his family. No, Elmo was closer than that. Not only did he and Elmo interrelate during most of their waking hours, their chosen profession put them into emotionally intense and physically demanding situations where each one often had to rely upon the other for his very survival. Being compelled to lean heavily upon each other had fostered between them a deep, mutual trust and a simpatico that often gave observers the impression that they could read each other’s minds. They almost could. Over the years, they had grown to act in such concordance that friends of theirs could not imagine mentioning one without the other. It was hard for those outside of this dyad to compete with such a bond. The brave hearts that said, “I do” to forming long-term relationships with each of these police partners learned early on that they played second fiddle to this exclusive duet.
The intensity of this brotherhood-bond between police partners was what made the loss of one partner not only unbearable, but also devastating for the one left behind. When Elmo was brutally murdered, Dobey had tried to console himself with the fact that his partner had died in the line of duty, but all of that seemed relatively hollow now that there was an Elmo-shaped abyss echoing through the center of his being.
CHAPTER THREE The One that Comes to Mind
After showering, Dobey went over to the bathroom sink and opened the medicine cabinet to take out his shaving kit. He recalled his brief morning encounter with Edith and smiled faintly to himself out of fondness for Edith and gratitude for his wife’s comforting presence in his life. After Elmo’s death, Dobey had relied heavily upon his family to get him through his grief. Dobey’s daughter, Rosie, had been born a few months after Elmo’s death and Edith and he had named her after Elmo’s wife, Rose. He had found some consolation in focusing his attention on his family and throwing himself further into his law enforcement career by working to attain an assignment as a police captain.
He had been grateful to obtain his current position because it allowed him to oversee the homicide division, an area of police work in which he had already staked a personal claim. He had sworn a private oath to bring Elmo’s murderers to justice and all he needed was the right opportunity to nail Stryker when he could find a way to bring more evidence to light. Moreover, being a police captain afforded him the possibility of being able to watch out for the lives of the police officers under his jurisdiction.
One police officer in particular came immediately to mind.
Dobey’s thoughts wandered back to the one-year anniversary of Elmo’s death. Dobey had only been a captain for a couple of months. Immediately after Elmo’s death, Dobey’s horrific nightmare had started off as a regular nighttime visitor and then continued to dog him on-and-off during the next several months. Towards the end of the first year its appearance had tapered off quite a bit, but as soon as he had turned the calendar page to May, the nightmare had reared its ugly head again, returning with a vengeance on the exact date of Elmo’s murder. He hardly slept that Sunday night. On Monday morning he had driven to police headquarters in a fog of distracted grief. As soon as he arrived in the squad room, he had poured a cup of coffee, sequestered himself in his office, and buried his head in the usual mountain of paperwork piled on his desk. The next thing he remembered was looking up in time to see the door to his office open slowly and someone poking the very top of his head into view. Dobey heard the creak of his office door being opened and caught just a tiny glimpse of the person’s hair out of the corner of his eye. The hair was dark and curly. For just a split second, Dobey’s heart skipped a beat.
Elmo?
“G’Morning, Capt’n.”
The rest of the head had poked itself into the room. Not even close. It was Detective Sergeant David Starsky. “You left a note that said you wanted to see me, Capt’n.”
Dobey had stared at his intruder for a couple of seconds. Something was flying around in his brain with nowhere to land. When it finally touched down, he exploded.
“Yeah, Starsky. I left you a note that I wanted to see you. That was on Friday. This is Monday!”
“So, what was it, Capt’n?”
Dobey hesitated a second and then hollered, “I don’t remember!”
“Well, then maybe it wasn’t that impor—“
“It was important on Friday!” screeched Dobey. “Look, you’re not getting paid to ignore my directives. Maybe when you worked in the 10th district you were able to sneak under Captain Hursh’s radar, but I’m not going to let you get away with that when I have something to say about it…”
That was what Dobey used to say. Streetwise Starsky had a real problem with authority and tested Dobey’s patience on more than one occasion. However, Dobey eventually became more willing to cut Starsky plenty of slack and to put up with his annoying shenanigans because he was such a good cop. It was Starsky who had first tracked down a piece of solid evidence to implicate Stryker directly in Elmo’s murder at the time of the investigation. Although there was not enough evidence to arrest Stryker at that time, it had given Dobey some piece of mind to know who was responsible for his partner’s death. Four years later, it was Starsky and his current partner, Detective Sergeant Kenneth Hutchinson, who had been able to gather enough incriminating evidence during a drug ring bust to convict Stryker on a Murder One charge for Elmo’s death. Dobey had had the privilege of personally serving Stryker the warrant for his arrest. Now that Stryker was on Death Row for killing a cop in the State of California, he felt some closure about the case and about his pledge to Elmo, but for some reason, the victory had not been able to quell his emptiness. A cop was still dead and he hadn’t been able to prevent it.
Dobey had repeatedly gone over and over in this mind what he might have done to avoid the tragedy of Elmo’s appalling murder. What clues had he missed? What signs had he failed to take into account that Elmo was in danger? After years of beating himself over the head with ‘what might have been,’ he had decided that it was no use dwelling on the past. Even if he could not save himself from the horror of losing his partner, he would do everything in his power to keep it from happening to other police officers.
It was Dobey’s way of trying to salvage his heart…or, at least, what was left of it.
CHAPTER FOUR A Close Shave
With all of his shaving accoutrements lined up on the bathroom sink, Dobey lifted his eyes to look at his reflection in the mirror. Upon seeing the weariness in the face echoed back to him, he sighed deeply. Something in what he saw made him feel much older than his fifty-one years. Perhaps it was the dark circles under his eyes and the deep furrows carved into his forehead that revealed the many years of worry he had suffered in trying to keep a constant watch over the members of his police force. Too much of his job was out of his hands and not being able to control outcomes had taken a toll upon him from the unremitting stress. Even with a high degree of training, police officers dealt with the unpredictability of indiscriminate and desperate human violence.
It was bad enough that Dobey could not always protect his officers, but what gave him the worst headache was that sometimes his officers went against protocol and took unnecessary risks.
Okay. It wasn’t just any random police officers that gave him a headache. It was two in particular.
Starsky and Hutchinson
Dobey really worried about this pair. He had endured more sleepless nights, gotten more ulcers, gorged himself more often, and come to work cranky more times than not because this dynamic duo had disobeyed his orders, ignored standard police procedures, offended every official that stepped in their way, and gotten themselves into trouble more times than he could recount; so far, they had managed to live to tell their tales, but not before Dobey had acquired a whole lot of gray hairs in the process.
Dobey pumped a sizeable dollop of shaving cream into the palm of his hand and began to lather his face.
Starsky and Hutch. What a combo.
Fate had originally brought them together and an intense friendship forged in the heat of their police work had kept them together from that point forward. In their eight or nine years together they had progressed from sharing a passion for their work, to sharing a passion for surviving the work, to a passion for just plain surviving. As it turned out, fate would also have it that not only their work, but also their life circumstances had forced them to cling to each other for dear life more than once. It was this very aspect of their partnership that fueled Dobey’s concern and protectiveness for them: neither one had been able to sustain a long-term relationship with anyone outside of their mutual bond. This put both of them in an extremely precarious and emotionally vulnerable position. If either one ever suffered the unspeakable experience of losing the other, they became doomed to interment in an immeasurable void.
With his cheeks and chin covered with the thick foam, he rinsed off his hand and left the water running. Then he unscrewed his razor and changed the blade, taking care not to cut himself.
After reflecting on Starsky and Hutch’s partnership, Dobey was thankful that although Elmo had been the primary source of emotional interaction and support in his life, his partner had not been his sole source of relational sustenance. Elmo and he had a family upon which to rely when things got heated up on the job or even, at times, between them. They each had alternative human sanctuaries to which they could turn when the going got tough. Sometimes that made all the difference in their psychological survival. Not so with Starsky and Hutch. Neither one of them was especially close to his own family and neither one of them had been able to forge his own stable family life outside of their police fraternity.
It hadn’t been for lack of opportunity. Neither one had any difficulty in attracting women, but where they succeeded in landing potential mates, they failed in maintaining to keep them.
Oftentimes this had not been their fault.
Each of them worked long hours. Dobey often called upon their services at times other than their allotted shifts because they were both extremely good at their jobs. If there was a homicide case and someone was breathing down his neck to get it solved pronto, Dobey did not hesitate to call in Starsky and Hutch at a moment’s notice. When there was a critical job to do, he wanted his best men to handle the case and they were almost always his first choice. Dobey felt a little guilty about taking advantage of their loyalty to him and their dedication to their work, but they always obliged. On some level, their keen willingness to take on additional cases, especially when it meant sacrificing personal time off and cutting short their interactions with each of their current flames, spoke volumes about their personal priorities.
Dobey carefully started to shave his face and neck, rinsing the razor after each painstaking stroke.
Dobey had noticed that both Starsky and Hutch often purposely engaged in impermanent liaisons with women. He figured that their flings were generally more practical for them given their law enforcement commitments, but he also learned over the years that each of the boys had their own reasons for struggling with the issue of permanence where females were concerned. Hutch had become acutely gun-shy about jumping on the committed-relationship bandwagon because his experience with the institution of marriage had left an extremely bad taste in his mouth. His ex-wife had turned out to be an opportunist who left him after she figured out that he did not share her private aspirations for fame and fortune. Since being burned so badly in the committed-relationship-department, Hutch had become severely allergic to anything that even hinted of wedding bells or relationship durability in general. Starsky, on the other hand, did not seem disillusioned about the idea of marriage or commitment. In fact, he often came across as a hopeless romantic. However, he did suffer from his own emotional handicap. Ever since his father’s death when Starsky was a teenager, and the subsequent disintegration of his family, he had been left with an enormous hole in his heart that often propelled him to act rather impulsively. His burning desire to belong to a family again, coupled with his passionate temperament, often motivated him to ask more from a woman than she was ready to give and so mismatched intentions had often led Starsky down the road to bitter disappointment.
Yet neither Starsky nor Hutch usually got to the point in their relationships where they had to deal with these personal demons. Their perpetually frustrated girlfriends, after being faced with the reality that they had to compete for Starsky and Hutch’s time, often cried ‘uncle’ and went in search of greener pastures. As for the women who dared to stay on and companion one of the detectives, there was a high cost to all of this police devotion: the hearts of Sergeants Starsky and Hutchinson were already committed elsewhere. If these women planned to stick around they discovered that they had to make do with the emotional leftovers. Yet there was an even higher price extracted from them for becoming attached to one of these eligible bachelors: association with these ambitious crime fighters inexorably yanked them into the merciless whirlpool of brutality and violence in which Starsky and Hutch constantly swam. The lucky ones escaped with their lives. The rest became unwitting casualties of malicious and perverse human revenge.
The conclusion of the story was always the same: Starsky and Hutch had each other. And that was the dilemma. Two imperishable hearts had been wed together, but they dwelt in bodies with expendable lives.
When one of them went missing, the other one went temporarily adrift, like a boat without a mooring. The only thing that kept the remaining one going was his determined and relentless search for the absent other. The unmitigated and single-minded passion to find the lost partner was similar to a temporary kind of madness. Dobey had often attempted to contain the obsessive zeal of the lone partner by insisting on enlisting the services of the rest of the police force (because after all, that’s what they were paid to do), but he usually didn’t get that far. Love was not only blind, but it was also deaf, dumb, and stupid.
Dobey recalled a specific incident where he had tried to head off another desperate crusade by a solo partner. On this occasion, not only one blonde was missing, but two. Hutch and a woman named Lisa Hendricks had been kidnapped and were being held for ransom. The kidnappers had called police headquarters and dictated their terms to Starsky and Dobey, giving them only an hour to come up with a plan. Starsky was so worried about making sure that Hutch and Lisa remained unharmed, he took no time to think through the risks to himself. All Starsky saw was Hutch. At those times, Dobey knew that he had to intervene and become Starsky’s mother hen, but it wasn’t easy to override the fanaticism of a heart whipped into a frenzy by the threat of abandonment.
Dobey remembered his heated and unsuccessful attempt at trying to talk some sense into Starsky’s head.
(Dobey) Starsky, you’re crazy! I can’t allow you go out there alone without a complete backup behind you! (Starsky) They’ve got Hutch and they’ve got the girl. At the first sniff of trouble they’re going to blow them away.
(Dobey) And as soon as you hand the satchel over they’re going to kill you! Nope, I can’t allow it.
(Starsky) Look, Captain, they’re very smart. The way they’ve got this thing set up there’s no way you can cover me without tipping them off. Now, I’m going in there whether you approve it or not.
(Dobey) The hell you are!
The two of them had gotten into one of their staring contests. Dobey knew from experience that this was a losing battle. The next step was to try and negotiate for the detective’s safety.
(Dobey) At least you’re going to wear a wire.
Starsky knew this dance quite well. He reached into his pocket and then dangled a wire in front of Dobey’s face. Starsky loved staying one step ahead of his captain in order to catch him off-guard.
Dobey had managed to stammer, “This way...uh...we may not be there to hold your hand, but we can come in and clean up the mess…”
Dobey wasn’t ready to be outdone. He was going to give Starsky exactly what he wanted.
(Dobey) Now, raise your shirt…
(Starsky) What?
(Dobey) Raise your shirt.
Starsky had pointed to the inside of his jacket and meekly stated, “Um, I was thinking that you could put it on the inside of…”
Dobey was unfazed. (Dobey) Will you raise your shirt?
Starsky raised his shirt.
(Dobey) Now, here, hold that.
As he placed the wire up against Starsky’s skin, Dobey heard Starsky say, “Your hands are colder than a dead trout.”
Dobey had chuckled to himself as he wondered how often Starsky was in the habit of handling dead fish.
Then, with an air of satisfaction, he yanked from his desk a long length of strong cloth tape and loudly unpeeled it from its roll. As he affixed the wire to Starsky’s torso with plenty of adhesive, he secretly gloated about how much it was going to hurt Starsky when he eventually tore the wire off his tender skin. If Starsky was going to be a pain-in-the-ass, then Dobey was going to give him a pain in his side.
While Starsky had driven the Torino to the contact spot, a phone booth on the corner of Broadway. Dobey and Detective Grover had followed at a safe distance by car, making sure to stay out of sight in case Starsky was being watched. When the contact was made by phone, Dobey had listened in horror as it became evident that the kidnapper was wise to the idea of Starsky carrying a wire. He knew there was nothing he could do as Starsky matter-of-factly stated, “This concludes the conducted portion of this broadcast.” Dobey had turned to Grover with a look of defeated resignation.
(Dobey) Well, so much for the wire. He’s all by his lonely, now.
He hoped that his statement did not turn into a prophetic prediction.
Dobey had immediately directed Grover to pull up alongside the parked Torino to confer with Starsky about their next move, but by the time he got there, Starsky’s welfare was already way out of his hands. Starsky was gone, and so was his chance to offer him any aid.
This really rankled Dobey because once again he couldn’t do anything to protect his men.
Dobey understood all about the rash dedication to one’s partner—he really did. He went out of his way to allow both Starsky and Hutch the room they needed when the other one was in danger, but at some point there had to be a limit. He was responsible for the lives of his men and he had to do what he could to protect them, especially when they would not protect themselves. What got to him most about Starsky and Hutch’s ‘police-procedure-be-damned’ attitude was that it put each of them in situations where they were exposed to unnecessary risks. He simply refused to enshrine recklessness when he feared that its worship would demand a bloodthirsty human sacrifice. Their commitment and dedication to each other was more than commendable, but as far as Dobey was concerned, their reactionary willingness sacrifice themselves on behalf of the other carried too high a price. Even if he acquiesced to their myopic devotion to each other, he refused to accept their all-too-eager readiness to commit suicide.
Dobey was fully aware of the hellish torment of losing a partner and how difficult it was to live with the enduring sensation that your soul had been ripped out of your body through the center of your chest. That was bad enough. However, to suffer that fate utterly alone was, for Dobey, completely unimaginable. Starsky and Hutch lived as if they were inseparable. If it were true that neither one of them wanted to live without the other, then it made no sense for one to sacrifice himself, even to keep the other one alive. As far as these two were concerned, Dobey figured that the undisputable point of the matter was to keep them both alive.
Distracted by his reverie, he aimlessly swished the razor underneath the falling water. Just thinking about Starsky’s heedlessness was causing his head to ache again. He lifted his head and again noticed the tired features of his careworn face reflected back to him in the mirror. Sighing, he began to rasp the razor upward along his neck. Then Dobey had the strangest thought…
If only one of those detectives were left behind, I wonder if the remaining one would even want to be alive…
Dobey suddenly burst into tears. The explosion of grief caused the razor to sink deeply into his tender flesh and open up a ruby-colored gash in the underside of his chin.
He quickly leaned over the sink and watched helplessly as the unwelcome tears intermingled with the cascading drops of blood and disappeared down the drain.
CHAPTER FIVE Warning Signs
Dobey eased his car out of the driveway and headed for his office at police headquarters. He decided to distract himself from his grim recollections by listening to the morning news on the car radio.
“…and here are yesterday’s baseball scores: Cincinnati Reds over the San Diego Padres, seven to four…”
Hmmph! Snorted Dobey.
“…Indians scraped past the Toronto Blue Jays one to zero at Cleveland Stadium; Rangers beat the Twins seven to five; Tigers over the Yankees three to one; and the Kansas City Royals won against the Mariners one-to-nothing…”
That was enough on the sports front. Dobey tried another station to find the morning news report.
“Ayatollah Khomeini in power in Iran…Energy Crisis fueling only more fights at the gas pumps …new British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher…President Carter suggesting six-year Presidential terms…”
The thick traffic was beginning to unnerve him a little, so he switched to a music station, hoping to find something a little more upbeat. He settled on a station playing a song he easily recognized, a catchy title sung by Marvin Gaye:
Ooh, I bet you're wond'rin' how I knew 'bout your plans to make me blue
As Dobey allowed the music to enter his spirit he absentmindedly tapped his hand on the steering wheel in rhythm with the music. The tempo was upbeat, but something about its poignant theme began to tug at him.
It took me by surprise I must say When I found out yesterday Don’t you know that I heard it through the grapevine
What was that?! Dobey leaned on his horn and blared his disgust at a car that suddenly zipped into his lane right in front of him. It nearly cut him off and almost forced him completely off the road. He cursed under his breath during the few heart-stopping and desperate seconds it took to regain control of his outsized car. Dobey hated things coming at him from out of nowhere.
Not much longer would you be mine Oh I heard it through the grapevine Oh I'm just about to lose my mind Honey, honey yeah
The adrenaline-pumping jolt from his near car collision distracted Dobey’s concentration enough so that he now faced another unwelcome shock. Looking up, he abruptly realized that the traffic light immediately ahead of him was in the process of turning from amber to red.
I know a man ain't supposed to cry But these tears I can't hold inside Losin' you would end my life you see 'cause you mean that much to me…
Dobey instinctively slammed on his brakes, causing his tires to squeal until he came to a lurching stop just in time to prevent his car from careening into the intersection.
Not much longer would you be mine Oh I heard it through the grapevine And I'm just about to lose my mind Honey, honey yeah…
Panting from his unnerving ordeal, Dobey heaved a huge sigh and switched off the radio with his jittery hand.
The music was definitely not doing anything to lighten his mood.
CHAPTER SIX The Color of the Walls
When Dobey arrived at Police Headquarters he made sure to enter his office through the side door rather than go through the squad room so as to avoid running into the painters. He did not appreciate the rude awakening that had gotten his morning off to a bad start and he did not want to make room for any further opportunities to spoil the rest of his day. What business did these nincompoops have in disturbing his peaceful slumber in order to tell him they were going to redecorate his landscape?
Dobey sat down at his desk and stared for a moment at the pile of paperwork that that was waiting patiently for his undivided attention. He sighed. The paperwork could wait for him a little longer while he took the time to get himself a cup of coffee. He got up from his desk and began walking towards the door that would take him out into the squad room, but he stopped himself before he put his hand on the doorknob. He figured that he had better sequester himself in his office hideout for a while longer. So he helped himself to a cup of cold water from the water cooler situated by the door. After pouring the water into a paper cup, he gulped it down in one, long draft. When he was finished drinking, his eyes lingered upon the photograph hanging upon the wall above the cooler. It was a picture of Elmo and he in uniform the day they had been partnered together. Dobey smiled.
They had both been from the same hometown and had attended the same high school, but because Dobey had been a couple of grades ahead of Elmo, they did not actually meet until they were stationed together in the same Army unit after being drafted into the Korean War. Their common background and the fact that they had been the only two men in their division to survive the war cemented their friendship for good. Their tour of duty included a stint in the military police force and this had whetted their appetite for work in law enforcement. They had each decided that if they made it home in one piece, they would sign up to join their local police force. Indeed, when the war was over, they immediately began their training at the police academy together and made sure that by the time they became detectives, they were partnered together.
As Dobey contemplated the young face of his partner, he recognized the familiar features of another man he had come to know well through his association with Starsky and Hutch, their number-one informant, Huggy Bear Brown. Huggy Bear was Elmo’s first cousin and bore a high degree of physical similitude to him. Dobey’s first meeting with Huggy Bear had been a bit of a shock to him because Huggy and Elmo looked so closely alike. It had taken quite a while for Dobey to get used to being around Huggy because the family resemblance reminded him so strongly of his missing half. There was something unsettling about constantly encountering this Elmo-not-Elmo person, but eventually, Dobey came to enjoy having Huggy around because it kept him connected to Elmo in an indirect sort of way.
Dobey looked intently into the smiling eyes of his partner and was filled with an inextricable longing. He spontaneously reached out his hand to touch Elmo’s face in the photo, but was met, instead, by the cold glass covering the snapshot—a stinging reminder that he remained locked outside of Elmo’s comforting presence.
Dobey averted his eyes from the black and white image of his memories-locked-in-time and studied the walls surrounding him instead.
What color had they said that they were going to repaint the walls?
For some reason, the only color that came to his mind was ‘gray.’
CHAPTER SEVEN Keeping Score
Dobey slowly shuffled back to his desk and began to shuffle papers. He welcomed a distraction from his distractions. Soon, his mind settled down into the quagmire of bureaucracy piled before him.
After some hours, Dobey looked up from his work and gazed at his watch. It was about twenty minutes until noon. He stretched his arms and then yawned. There was one more police report that needed his special attention and he had saved it until last because he was dreading having to deal with it.
One of his rookies had been responsible for nearly getting his senior partner killed when he failed to cover him properly. It had been a classic error in judgment that any officer could have made, but what infuriated Dobey most was that the academy training was intended to eliminate the obvious mistakes. Although Dobey wanted to be lenient for a first-time offense, he dared not risk letting this officer off lightly, particularly when the ramifications of a miscalculation at this professional level could be catastrophic. It was bad enough that there were felons on the loose who thought nothing about blowing away a cop, but it was much worse when a cop’s life was put on the line unnecessarily, especially when his own partner was to blame.
Allowing your partner to get killed was unforgivable, but Dobey already knew that.
Whether he admitted that to himself was another issue entirely.
Maybe he could go easy on a rookie. Time and investment in a partner’s welfare had not quite sunk in yet. It took plenty of experience to work another person’s life into your frame of reference because so much police work required your focus upon keeping civilians and yourself alive. You had to work to keep in mind that you had an ally working along side you and that keeping your partner alive was the best way to keep yourself alive. With practice, you did not even have to think consciously about your partner’s whereabouts or current status in relation to you because it became second-nature to think in terms of you-and-me.
The challenge inherent in saving lives was not to take anything for granted. Watching out for each other constantly remained a matter of life and death. When the stakes were this high and lives were on the line, an officer could not sacrifice vigilance because it took only one time to lose everything.
The last time, it had been Dobey’s turn to save Elmo’s life. However, he ended up sleeping on the job—and that’s what killed him. The thugs had out-maneuvered the undercover detectives by detecting and uncovering them first and he had been oblivious to that fact. His partner had been in danger and he hadn’t been there to back him up. It was true that neither one of them knew what was about to go down, but that excuse never sat well with him. Elmo and he had been there for each other when danger was staring them right in the face—that went without saying—but the trouble was, in this case, that they had both been taken by surprise. Of course, those were the risks. He couldn’t be responsible for Elmo twenty-four-hours-a-day-seven-days-a-week (there was such a thing as being off-duty), but unfortunately, crime never took a vacation.
What it all boiled down to was that Dobey’s willingness to be there for his partner hadn’t been enough. He would have done anything for his partner, including dying for him. Dobey was not frightened of that possibility and so he did not have to think twice about putting himself in danger for his partner’s sake. There was nothing that could have kept Dobey from being at Elmo’s side, except for one thing—not being given the chance. What good were all of his worthy promises and good intentions if he never got the opportunity to be there when it really counted? There was nothing worse than realizing much too late that there had been the possibility of losing his partner apart from his efforts, apart from his intervention, apart from his presence—apart from him completely.
A small consolation for Dobey was that he did not feel as if he had owed Elmo anything. Years of mutual, sacrificial support wordlessly reinforced the fact that everything they each had belonged to the other without question. Long ago, they had both stopped keeping score…
All of a sudden, Dobey’s thoughts were interrupted by a crescendo of voices coming from the other side of the door.
“…No, it’s still my serve. The score is 10 to 9, match point.”
“Match point? That’s only eleven points. I told you, the first one to reach twenty-one points wins.”
“Starsky, in regulation table tennis the first one to reach eleven points wins, as long as they have a two-point advantage.”
“Well, this isn’t regulation anything, buddy boy! Why don’t we play this game until twenty-one points for five bucks?”
“Starsky, you’re just being a sore loser. I’m not going to change the regulations for you for five lousy bucks.”
“Ten?”
“Starsk, come on, let’s just get this over with. You’re just prolonging the agony. Ten serving nine and you’re going down…”
“No, wait Hutch. I mean it. How about dinner? The loser has to buy the winner dinner at a restaurant of his choice.”
“Okay. After I win this point you’ll take me to the restaurant of my choice.”
“No, the bet’s on only if we play for twenty-one points.”
“All right, you’re on. You’re just dying to win, aren’t you? Ten serving nine…”
The voices died down again until all that Dobey could hear was…
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong… insrsid2951694 This noise had probably been going on before, but Dobey had been so preoccupied that he did not recognize it until now.
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth…
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
Dobey’s head began to throb with the sound.
This was going to drive him crazy. Dobey yanked open the desk drawer and fished around until he found a bottle of aspirin. He shook out two of the tiny, white tablets, plopped the bottle back in the drawer, slammed it closed, and pushed himself out of his chair so that he could visit the water cooler once more.
After filling his cup, Dobey’s eyes were drawn again to Elmo’s face hanging above the cooler. Elmo was watching over him—he just knew it.
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
The days after Elmo’s murder were now only a blur in his mind. He wondered how he had ever made it through the funeral. All he could recall was dark blue uniforms, shiny buttons, white gloves, a twenty-one-gun salute, an American flag draped over a casket…Taps.
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
How did he ever get through it all?
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…ker-plunk!
“Ha! Now it’s my serve. It looks as if ‘The Great Hutchinson’ is about to lose his winning streak. Any last words?”
“No way. You just got lucky. This isn’t over ‘til it’s over.”
“Just you wait and see. Nine serving ten…”
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
Those two. (Dobey could not think of one without thinking of the other.) The ‘pinging’ and the ‘ponging’ just about said it all. Starsky and Hutch shared a mutual repartee that surpassed anything Dobey had ever encountered during all his years on the police force. Sure, police partnerships wove two officers together into a tight, efficient team, but that did not always guarantee that two separate personalities meshed on a personal level. Differences in temperament, other incompatibilities, and just plain burnout prevented some partners from clicking together. Heck, some police partners barely tolerated each other—but not Starsky and Hutch. They were two friends who just happened to be policemen. Being on the force had been a crucial element in bringing them together because they were from different sides of the tracks and would probably not have interacted together under other circumstances. (Perhaps being from two such different worlds acted as a buffer between them because it enabled them to complement one another so well.) Yet, once they connected through their police academy training, the relationship that subsequently developed transcended both of their careers.
However, there was another quality present in the relationship between Starsky and Hutch that stood out to Dobey and made him believe that they were part of another breed of cop altogether—how they interacted with one another. These guys had no hang-ups about openly expressing their feelings for one another, touching each other, and caring for one another, and they did it without shame or self-consciousness. Their pas de deux was almost enviable. Their partnership had certainly developed the you-and-me quality necessary for effective police work, but for Starsky and Hutch, it went way beyond that. For them, ‘meandthee’ was one word. Their covering each other extended far beyond their commitment to law enforcement and spilled over into their relationship with each other. Not only did they cover each other’s backs, they covered for each other whenever possible.
Dobey was sure that his relationship to Elmo had been just as profound and just as passionate as that of Starsky and Hutch, but he belonged to an ethos where men did not speak openly of such things. He had been taught to keep his feelings to himself (if he acknowledged them at all), and learned to assume that the other person knew how he felt. It was the only way of being he knew, but it was also a pity. Although the reality of the mutual devotion between Elmo and he was assured, the spoken word would have been a great comfort, especially now that they were permanently exiled from each other’s presence. Dobey would now give anything for an opportunity to tell Elmo that he loved him and perhaps hear the same words from Elmo’s lips, but it was too late.
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
Dobey’s head was throbbing again. It was time to put an end to this game.
CHAPTER EIGHT The Game
Dobey watched himself turn the doorknob and exit his office as he stepped into the squad room.
(Starsky)…I heard of a restaurant so expensive they take credit-card references with your reservation…
(Dobey) Starsky and Hutch, I...um...I want to speak to you a minute…
(Starsky) One second, Capt’n, final point.
Final point? Good. This game was about over.
(Dobey) I know things are going a little slow around here with the painting and all. You’re probably going to say it’s none of my business, but I was just wondering…
Ping-pong, ping-pong, ping-pong…
The bouncing ball was mesmerizing. Dobey found himself momentarily swept up in their mutual interchange, as if his life depended on it. Nonetheless, the pitter-patter of their heart-song was beginning to rattle his brain again.
Dobey scowled.
(Dobey) Ah, where was I?
(Hutch) You were just wondering, Captain.
(Dobey) Yeah. I was wondering what’s going on!
(Starsky) I dunno, Capt’n, but I’m sure as hell going to find out!
Starsky slapped his paddle into Dobey’s chest and left it there for safekeeping. Starsky wasn’t about to let Hutch live this one down. He left a parting remark as he made a hasty exit.
(Starsky) Game, set, and match, Sucka!
Famous last words.
(Hutch) What?
(Dobey) What did he say?
(Hutch) I dunno, Captain, but I’m sure going to find out.
Hutch ran out in hot pursuit of Starsky, unceremoniously adding his ping-pong paddle to Dobey’s growing collection.
Dobey stood there for a moment with paddles in hand and shook his head. He was well aware that the two officers were being insubordinate, but he did not bother to say anything to them when they left. If they had seen his face, they would have seen a smirk.
I should give both of those guys a good paddling, but I suppose that ‘boys will be boys.’
Although Dobey would never have fully admitted it to himself, he loved both Starsky and Hutch more than his own soul. Of course, he had to keep a professional distance and as a police captain, he should not have favorites, but he could not help it with these two. They were good cops, certainly, and got the job done (even if their methods were a bit unorthodox), but his regard for them went much deeper than that. They embodied all that Dobey had loved and lost. If he could not regain his heart’s longings, then he would prevent others from suffering his fate.
Of his two favorite detectives, he had reserved a special place in his heart for Starsky. It was true that in many ways, Starsky was a big pain-in-the-neck and was often the more unruly partner of the pair, but he also possessed a childlike quality that was quite endearing. At times, Dobey felt as if interacting with Starsky was more like adventures-in-babysitting, but on the other hand, Starsky’s unsophisticated approach to life had a way of reminding him that life was worth living. Starsky’s boyishness helped him to appreciate the simple pleasures of human existence and enabled him to hold onto enough goodness and meaning to keep him going. Despite a painful and troubled early life, Starsky had found a way to survive on the streets and not self-destruct. Constant exposure to violence without human supports would have threatened anyone’s ability to persevere, but Starsky’s positive outlook and refusal to cave into negative circumstances had made it possible for him to forge ahead with purpose and fortitude. This quality was essential in police work. Over the years, Dobey had seen too many cops become jaded and cynical in their work because they gave up on the existence of goodness or its ability to overcome evil, but Starsky never gave up on his principles just because he had gotten a raw deal. He knew how to live, and live well, and he wanted others to experience the same. More than once, Starsky’s passion for his work and for life in general had often reminded Dobey of why had had become a cop in the first place.
Dobey held one ping-pong paddle in each hand and examined these instruments of Starsky and Hutch’s repartee. Here he was, the “Keeper of the Paddles”—how fitting. With a smile of deep pride and gratitude he determined once more to serve and protect the precious lives under his care.
He carefully laid the paddles together on the makeshift tennis table and returned to his office.
Upon entering his office, he looked one last time at Elmo’s picture.
Seeing Elmo’s smiling face now made him feel happy.
He looked at his watch. It was just past twelve o’clock.
He placed his hands in his pockets, wandered over to the window behind his desk, and surveyed the bustling scene outside. It really was a beautiful day…
RRRRRRRRING...
The phone on Dobey’s desk began to ring.
CHAPTER NINE Officer down
The phone call was from the front desk. All that Dobey heard from the voice on the other end was that one of his officers was down in the Metro Police Headquarters parking lot downstairs.
Bang, bang, bang…
Dobey’s footsteps echoed throughout the main level corridor as he rushed past the front desk, pausing only briefly to hear the receptionist say that shots had been fired and that at least one officer had been hit. Who was it? Was it too late? What kind of carnage would he encounter? Whose family would he have to call with the devastating news? Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. Dobey was out of breath by the time he finally burst through the door that opened into the parking lot. When he got outside, he saw a large crowd in the vicinity of Starsky’s red Torino.
Where were Starsky and Hutch?
If there had been trouble, they would probably have taken charge of the scene, but he could not see them anywhere.
Dobey rushed over towards the Torino and then stopped dead in his tracks. He saw that the side windows of the Torino had been shattered through on both sides and that there was a scraggly line of bullet holes along the driver’s side of the car.
In a heartbeat, Dobey surmised the whereabouts of Starsky and Hutch.
Dobey barreled his way through the gathering crowd of on-lookers with all the agility and gracefulness of a drunken Defensive Tackle.
When Dobey managed to push his way into the center of everyone’s attention, he saw Hutch on his knees leaning over the limp and bloodied form of Detective David Starsky.
Starsky was lying face-up on the ground a few feet from the Torino. He had been placed on a number of blankets and jackets due to the large amount of glass particles strewn around the vehicle. A uniformed officer, whose back was to Dobey, was kneeling on the ground on one side of Starsky and applying pressure across Starsky’s abdomen with a balled up shirt. Kneeling on the other side of Starsky, Hutch was frantically engaged in giving him CPR. Dobey noticed the slowly spreading stain of red liquid around the officer’s knees that was seeping from underneath Starsky’s body and trickling down his side from the blood-soaked shirt as the officer unsuccessfully attempted to prevent Starsky’s lifeblood from flowing away from him. Starsky’s unresponsive body heaved and rocked under the force of Hutch’s vigorous resuscitation efforts, giving the impression that the downed detective was only a rag doll in his hands.
Dobey heard Hutch mutter breathlessly in-between breaths and chest compressions, “Come on, Buddy, hang on…”
“Stand back and give the men some room,” Dobey hollered as the crowd made way for the barreling hulk of the police captain. “And somebody call an ambulance, now!”
“That’s been taken care of, Captain,” said a uniformed officer who was standing nearby. “They’re already on their way.”
“What happened here?” Dobey barked as he scanned the eyes of his officers for someone who could bring him up-to-speed.
“It looked like two men in police uniforms driving a black and white squad car,” offered one of the uniformed officers.
“Did anyone get the license number of the vehicle?” inquired Dobey.
“No, everything happened so fast. All of us hit the ground when he heard the shots, so none of us saw which way the squad car went. By the time most of us got back up on our feet, we were responding to the downed officer. But I do recall that when the squad car pulled out of its parking space I heard it scrape hard against the fender of the car parked beside it. That might have given it some sort of identifying mark on its left side.”
“A scraped police vehicle?” grumbled Dobey. “That’s going to be like trying to find a needle in a haystack! All right, send out a general APB on the police vehicle right away.”
Dobey shook his head and turned his attention back to the drama transpiring between his two detectives.
When Dobey’s eyes fastened back upon Hutch, he looked up briefly from pumping Starsky’s chest and gazed straight at him. At the sight of Hutch’s face, Dobey gasped as if he had just been punched in the stomach. Hutch’s expression was that of a man trying desperately to escape from the raging inferno of a burning building the very second he has just realized that all of the exits are completely engulfed in flame. The indelible image etched upon Hutch’s features shook Dobey to his core. It was the same expression that had been permanently carved into Dobey’s heart the moment he first beheld the hanging figure of his partner.
He feared that from that moment on, life, as they knew it, would never be the same again…
Dobey was well acquainted with the sharp, contrasting boundary line that separated past from future. There were times when unforeseen tragedy yanked people through a door without their permission and ushered them into an unwelcome reality from which they could never return. He had experienced what it was like to fall through this portal into a new and nightmarish dimension without the benefit of a return ticket. His own seamless timeline had been shattered the morning he had received his ‘rude awakening’ and had been unceremoniously ushered from his ‘before’ to imprisonment in his permanent ‘after’.
First, there was life with Elmo, and then there was none.
Hutch now tottered on that same margin, a prisoner in the twilight zone between the two possibilities. Dobey felt deeply for his detective as he feebly watched Hutch’s heroic endeavor to cling to his ‘before’.
WREEEEEEEEEEEEE…
The siren of the ambulance screamed its boisterous arrival as the rescue vehicle barreled into the parking lot. The paramedics hurriedly pulled out their equipment and rushed over to the scene. The onlookers scattered as the emergency medical technicians crouched beside Starsky and quickly unloaded their gear.
One of the paramedics tapped the shoulder of the uniformed police officer that had been applying pressure to Starsky’s wounds as a signal to get up and make room for him so that he could take over. The officer easily complied. However, Hutch was so engrossed in trying to keep Starsky alive that he had hardly noticed what was going on around him. When the second paramedic asked Hutch to allow him to intervene, Hutch was immovable.
Dobey bent over and placed his hand on Hutch’s shoulder.
“Hutchinson, it’s time to let the paramedics take over now.”
“I promised him I wouldn’t leave him,” declared Hutch, ignoring his captain.
Dobey motioned to one of the officers standing nearby. They simultaneously took a firm hold of Hutch’s arms and shoulders and lifted him gently to his feet while he vehemently protested.
“No, I have to make sure he’s okay,” asserted Hutch, his voice quavering.
“Let the professionals do their job,” countered Dobey. “They’ll take good care of him. We’ll follow the ambulance in my car as soon as it leaves. Why don’t we head over to my car so you can have a chance to sit down?”
Hutch was resolute. “No, I’ll be fine. I want to stay with him.”
Dobey did not hurry Hutch along. Even if he wasn’t sure why he did not insist on dragging Hutch away from the horror show taking place in front of them, he knew on some level that Hutch was afraid that he would never see his partner alive again. They watched in silence as the paramedics worked to stabilize Starsky for the ambulance ride and then began to secure him on the gurney. At that point, Hutch allowed Dobey to escort him to his car.
As they moved swiftly to his car, Dobey turned briefly to glance at Hutch who was striding zombie-like beside him from being in shock. He opened up the passenger door for Hutch and watched him get settled on the front seat. Then he went to the driver’s side, opened his own door, and slid behind the wheel. Since Dobey could see that the paramedics were still in the process of loading Starsky into the ambulance, Dobey fleetingly cast his eyes in Hutch’s direction to make sure his detective was okay. Hutch was shaking and staring down at his hands. Dobey reached into his pocket, pulled out a white handkerchief, and handed it to Hutch. Hutch nodded in gratitude as he began to wipe his partner’s blood from his hands.
CHAPTER TEN On the Way
The ambulance sped towards County General Hospital as its siren pierced the air with its wailing. Dobey shadowed the vehicle closely to take advantage of its cleared wake. The Mars Light on the roof of his car spun its glaring red beams to broadcast their state of emergency because time was fleeting.
Neither of the officers spoke to each other as their vehicle plowed through the lunch hour traffic. Dobey was intent on making sure that he did not fall behind the ambulance, and Hutch was preoccupied with the ambulance also, but for a different reason.
Halfway through their wild trip, Dobey briefly glanced over at Hutch to see how he was doing. Hutch’s face was pale. His eyes were wide, and staring straight ahead, straining with a great intensity so that he did not lose visual contact with the speeding transport that was leading them on their rollercoaster ride. Both of his hands were clamped, white-knuckled, onto the dashboard in front of him as if he feared that he would lose his grip on what lay ahead of him.
As Dobey surveyed his detective, he saw Hutch’s blank expression abruptly contort into grimace of wincing pain. As a tear rolled down Hutch’s cheek, he uttered just one word: “Starsky”. Dobey was momentarily taken aback by this spontaneous articulation.
“What is it, Hutch?” inquired the concerned captain.
“I don’t know,” mused Hutch. “All of a sudden, it felt as if something just tore my gut in half, but I don’t know where it came from.”
Dobey nodded.
After a lengthy pause, Hutch remarked, “I don’t know what hit me before, but whatever it was, it’s now gone.”
“That’s good,” said Dobey.
There was another long silence. Then Dobey heard Hutch’s rasping whisper, “Why him and not me?”
Dobey was silent. He could not possibly answer the very question he had been asking himself for years.
After pulling into the Emergency Room parking lot, Dobey quickly found a space and Hutch exploded out of the car to meet up with the paramedics as they wheeled Starsky into the Emergency Room. Dobey was not quite as nimble as Hutch and so by the time he reached the ambulance, only the driver remained. Dobey hurried toward the entrance to the Emergency Room and happened to walk past the EMT as he was closing the back doors of the vehicle.
“Your officer must have nine lives,” commented the EMT to Dobey.
“How’s that?” queried Dobey.
“Well, he’s pretty lucky—we lost him once on the way over here, but my partner was able to resuscitate him.”
Dobey gasped and swallowed hard.
“I’m sure they’ll take good care of him at this hospital,” continued the EMT as he opened up the driver’s door to get into the ambulance. “They have a top notch medical team.”
“Um, thank you very much,” stammered Dobey.
Dobey stood still for a moment and watched the ambulance pull away from the unloading area. Then he had to remind himself to breathe. His entire body felt as if it were made of lead weights. It took all of his might to force himself to put one foot in front of the other and walk through the sliding glass doors of the Emergency Room entrance. As he heard the doors swish closed behind him, he could have sworn that someone had just torn his gut in half.
CHAPTER ELEVEN Waiting
Upon entering the building, the brightness of the hospital assaulted his eyesight. He wasn’t sure what unnerved him the most about being in hospitals—the lightly colored, endless hallways; the pervasive smell of disinfectant; or just the bleak, impersonal atmosphere. But now that he thought about it, perhaps it was simply that he had spent too much of his career in cold, sterile hospitals waiting with anxious police partners and family members for promising news that often never materialized.
Dobey scanned the scene in front of him and noticed the Emergency Room reception desk off to the right, so he went to inquire concerning Starsky’s whereabouts. He was directed down the hallway to Trauma Room One. As Dobey made his way to the end of the corridor, he became acutely aware of his footsteps echoing around him.
When he turned the corner, Dobey spied Hutch peering through the square, eye-level window in the swinging doors that led into the hospital trauma room to which he was heading. It was clear that Hutch was extremely agitated by what he was witnessing in that room. A young intern in green scrubs brushed past Dobey as he raced towards the trauma room. Before the intern pushed open the doors, Dobey overheard him say to Hutch,
“I’m sorry, sir, but you cannot stand here, you’ll need to go to the Emergency Room waiting area over there.”
The intern pointed to a section of seats right off the main hallway.
“Okay,” said Hutch distractedly as he turned around to discover where the intern had pointed.
As the intern burst through the swinging doors, Dobey caught a fleeting glimpse of what was transpiring inside the trauma room. A large number of medical personnel, huddled together shoulder-to-shoulder and each intensely engaged in their particular tasks, surrounded a waist-high metal table. The atmosphere in the room buzzed with an incessant stream of unintelligible, but firm-sounding directives that were all aimed at the center of their attention on that table. Dobey could not make out Starsky’s form lying in the midst of that pandemonium, but one thing in particular did stand out to him: there was an enormous amount of blood. Several pools of thick, red liquid covered the floor underneath the table and were accumulating both steadily and rapidly from various scarlet cascades pouring from the table’s periphery. It seemed as if the table had spontaneously converted into a gray storm cloud and burst into a summer shower of crimson rain.
Dobey stood transfixed for a second, shuddered, sighed deeply, and then continued his trudge towards the waiting area to which Hutch was currently retiring.
Hutch wandered over to the row of chairs in the waiting room and wearily slumped down into one of them. He rubbed his face with his hands and then leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Dobey went over to the waiting room and sat in the chair next to Hutch.
He didn’t know what to say. The only thing coming to his mind at the moment was, “Well, that’s it, huh?” But he knew better than to say that.
Luckily, Hutch broke the silence first. Opening his eyes, he turned his head to look at Dobey.
“I overheard the paramedic tell the doctor that Starsky went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance.”
Dobey sighed and kept his eyes focused on the floor in front of him.
“I know,” he said, simply.
“Captain, what if he never regains consciousness?” Hutch erupted. “What if he doesn’t…?”
Hutch’s voice broke off. He scrunched his face and pinched his eyes together with his thumb and index finger.
Hutch was silent while he waited for his churning emotions to subside.
“When I found Starsky on the ground, he was so…still…”
Hutch’s cheeks and face flushed as he attempted to contain a rising flood of throbbing pain that threatened to engulf him.
“Captain, he didn’t wake up. Not once. He never opened his eyes. I told him over and over again that I was right there for him, but I don’t know if he even heard me…”
Hutch’s voice trailed off again. He sniffed quietly and then exclaimed, “God, this can’t be happening.”
Hutch shifted uncomfortably in his seat and then pushed himself up slightly on the arms of the chair. His body subtly writhed and contorted for a few seconds, as if he were desperately trying to escape from the claws of an inward tormentor, but then he flopped back down again as if, exhausted from the struggle, he was temporarily surrendering to whatever fate awaited him.
Dobey worried about what he imagined was beginning to transpire in the heart and mind of the blond detective seated next to him. The one thing that Dobey had been spared when Elmo died was the experience of having to wait. He did not have to wrestle within the grip of an interminable limbo while waiting in dreadful anticipation for an uncertain outcome. One evening, he had interacted directly with his partner in person and the next morning he was informed that Elmo was dead. There was no in-between, no ‘maybe’, no last-minute possibilities—just death. Dobey wondered if perhaps the anticipation of death was more torture than the cold, hard fact of death itself, but he wasn’t certain. (Well, if he hadn’t had a chance to experience the emotional teeter-totter concerning whether Elmo would live or die, he assumed that in Starsky’s case, he was about to get a crash course.) However, given the circumstances, he wondered if wasn’t easier to just write Starsky off now so that he could at least get ready for the worst eventuality. At the moment, despair was weighing heavily upon him and he doubted if he had the strength to believe for a positive outcome despite the odds. Still, he decided to suspend his own judgment for Hutch’s sake.
How would Hutch handle the news if Starsky didn’t make it?
Hutch had been threatened with the loss of Starsky before.
There had been the time that Starsky had been injected with a poisonous substance and given twenty-four hours to live. Yet Hutch had survived that ordeal by maintaining a determined optimism. Hutch had convinced himself that given enough time and enough knowledge he would find a way to save Starsky’s life. As long as Starsky was still breathing, Hutch did not even think twice about doing whatever it would take to find an antidote.
Perhaps the closest that Hutch had ever come to actually losing Starsky was when Starsky had been shot at Giovanni’s Italian restaurant. Dobey recalled when Hutch and he had sat together in a waiting room just like this one while Starsky was in surgery to repair his shoulder. By then, Starsky’s life was not in danger and his prognosis had been extremely promising, so all Hutch and he had to do was wait for the surgery to finish and then find out from the doctor how long Starsky’s recovery time would be.
Dobey remembered using their waiting time to go over the details of what had transpired that evening between 11:00pm and midnight and to commend Hutch on his excellent police work. As an addendum to their lively conversation, he had asked Hutch, “When Starsky was shot did you ever fear that you were actually going to lose him?”
Hutch had pondered the question thoughtfully and then replied, “At one point, I actually thought that I had lost him. After my first plan to disarm the assassins had backfired, because the linebacker, Jimmy, had lousy timing, I went into the back room to check on him. When I first entered, Starsky was lying on the floor facedown and he wasn’t moving. When I first called his name, he did not respond. That’s when it first hit me that maybe I was too late—that I hadn’t been able to do enough for him in time. It was weird. Time seemed to stand still. I swear that for a split second, everything in my body felt as if it had been temporarily unplugged. The next thought that crossed my mind was a little strange. For some reason I feared that maybe I had killed Starsky by asking him to throw the pitcher, as if the exertion might have pushed him over the edge, but by that time, the jolt of finding Starsky unconscious had pushed me a little over the edge as well. When I felt for Starsky’s pulse and got a steady heartbeat, all I can remember thinking was, ‘You idiot, what the hell are you doing lollygagging around on the floor while I’m up to my eyeballs in Mafiosos?’”
Dobey chuckled to himself and shook his head.
It was the last time he was going to smile that day.
CHAPTER TWELVE Portents
Dobey was snatched from his recollections by the approach of the young intern who had passed him in the corridor earlier. The intern’s expression looked both serious and solemn. Both Hutch and he stood abruptly to their feet to meet the intern and to learn Starsky’s current status.
“Good afternoon, I am Dr. Williamson. Are you gentlemen associates of Sergeant Starsky?”
“Yes,” said Hutch, “I’m Ken Hutchinson, his police partner, and this is his police captain, Harold Dobey.”
“Are there any family members present?” inquired the intern.
“We’re the only family he has available at the moment,” responded Hutch.
“I am not the main physician assigned to the sergeant’s case, but I was asked to give you an update on his status.”
“Will he make it?” asked Dobey.
“I would recommend trying to get ahold of any close family members as soon as possible,” stated Dr. Williamson, matter-of-factly. “Right now, I cannot tell you for certain what outcome to expect, but we were able to stabilize him. If he is able to pull through surgery, he will still be at high risk for post-operative complications.”
Hutch leaned into the intern’s direct line of sight so that he was staring at him directly and asked, “How bad is he?”
The intern returned Hutch’s intense gaze with compassionate eyes and slowly folded his arms in front of him.
The doctor cleared his throat and pronounced his judgment…
“He was bleeding extensively from at least three high-velocity bullet wounds that completely perforated his torso. He was losing blood so profusely that we had to open him up in the emergency room to prevent him from bleeding out. To be frank, the officer has suffered a massive amount of internal damage—multiple organs are involved, and possibly, some major blood vessels. In addition to the gunshot wounds, he also has a collapsed left lung that has put a considerable strain on his heart. If he survives surgery, he still faces the possibility of cardiac arrest or infection. It looks as if your sergeant is in excellent physical condition and this will be to his advantage. If he makes it through our major medical concerns, he has an excellent chance of making a full recovery, but we will know more after the surgery.”
Hutch’s voice was strained and barely audible when he asked, “Can I see him?”
“Not at the moment. We had to wheel him up for emergency surgery as soon as we got him stabilized. Please make yourselves comfortable. He’s probably going to be in surgery at least seven to eight hours—longer if we need to call in a vascular specialist. Someone will inform you when he is being moved into Intensive Care. That’s on the fifth floor.”
“Thank you,” said Hutch, weakly.
The intern nodded and headed off to his next assignment.
Dobey and Hutch locked eyes for a moment. Neither one knew what to say. Dobey watched Hutch as he slowly bit his lower lip, closed his eyes, and placed his hands on his hips. He plodded over to face the nearest wall, leaned against it with his outstretched arm, and hung his head.
It was clear from the quiet shaking of Hutch’s shoulders that the dam within his heart had just burst.
Some days, Dobey really hated his job.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Chance
According to the information provided by the intern, Dobey and Hutch made their way up to the fifth floor to the Intensive Care Unit and checked in at the nurse’s station, requesting any updates concerning Starsky’s status.
Hutch went to telephone Huggy Bear at “The Pits” to let him know what happened to Starsky, while Dobey went to find a cup of coffee. Luckily, there was a hot drink vending machine around the corner from the waiting area. By the time Dobey had secured a steaming cup of caffeine and settled down into one of the plastic chairs, Hutch was already on his way back from making his call to Huggy.
“How did Huggy take the news?” inquired Dobey.
“He wasn’t there when I called,” Hutch responded. “I left a message with the bartender. She said that she did not know when he would return. I hope he gets here soon.”
There was no sign of either Huggy or Starsky for what seemed like an eternity.
Neither Hutch nor Dobey was really prepared for the extensive amount of time that they were going to be held in suspense. The wait was interminable and the anticipation was killing them. More than eight hours of “What if...” frayed their nerves to the point of breaking.
Dobey was in the process of finishing another cup of coffee when an ICU nurse informed him that Starsky was being wheeled down from surgery. As he rose from his chair, he felt some initial relief to hear that Starsky had pulled through, but that didn’t prevent him from a nagging fear that when he saw the gurney pass by there would be a sheet over Starsky’s head. When Hutch saw the nurse approach Dobey, he instantly knew the gist of the information she provided and joined Dobey in standing in front of the nurse’s station to await Starsky’s arrival.
Squeak, squeak, squeak...
The wheels of Starsky’s gurney heralded the arrival of its silent passenger. A band of medical personnel attended the metal trolley as it approached the two anxiously waiting men. Dobey felt the muscles in the back of his neck tense as he tried to brace himself.
Dobey peeked over at Hutch who stood trembling next to him, a wide-eyed and apprehensive expression frozen upon his face while his entire attention concentrated upon the arrival of the looming crowd.
When the patient came within close eyesight Dobey looked intently for some signs of life, but Starsky was noticeably motionless and pallid. It didn’t look good.
As the gurney passed by them, Dobey and Hutch joined the procession and followed alongside. Hutch took Starsky’s hand while looking deeply into the face of his friend.
“Starsky, it’s me, Hutch. Can you hear me?”
Hutch searched Starsky’s features for some hint of response or recognition, however faint, but he was gravely disappointed. Hutch turned his attention to the physician who seemed to be in charge of this operation and caught his eye.
“Doctor?” Hutch rasped.
The doctor shook his head slowly and merely stated, “There was an extensive amount of internal damage. We did all we could.”
Hutch’s gaze instantly shot back to Starsky, as if this look would be his last.
Starsky’s entourage concluded their journey at the door of one of the ICU rooms. At this point, the doctor motioned for Dobey and Hutch to step aside. After the hospital attendants and nurses wheeled Starsky into the room, the doctor walked them over to an observation window that allowed visual access into Starsky’s ICU unit.
“We need to take a few minutes to transfer officer Starsky to his bed,” indicated the doctor. “Please wait here until we are finished and then you can visit with him. I need to tend to the patient now, but afterwards, I am available to answer any of your questions.”
The doctor turned and disappeared into the ICU room.
Hutch stood in front of the viewing window, thunderstruck and aghast. Speechless himself, Dobey placed his hand gently on Hutch’s shoulder.
“Captain...”
When Dobey touched him, Hutch began to stagger. Dobey quickly caught the reeling detective.
“Hutch, take it easy. Let me get you a seat...”
Dobey made sure that Hutch had steadied himself before he went to get a chair from the waiting area. When he positioned the chair in front of the observation window, Hutch turned it around and seated himself down, straddling the back of the chair and draping his elbows along the top of it. Dobey remained standing behind Hutch, as if he were a sentry stationed to watch over two dignitaries.
With Hutch settled, Dobey turned his attention to what was happening in the ICU room. The scene taking place before him felt surreal and dreamlike, as if he were sitting in the audience watching a theater performance. If he used his imagination, it almost seemed as if the nurses were simply tucking Starsky into bed for the night.
He hoped that they were not putting him to bed for good.
As soon as that thought had crossed Dobey’s mind, he noticed a green light bouncing along on the window pane.
What was that? Oh.
It was the heart monitor kicking into life, registering with each steady, rhythmic flicker that Starsky was, indeed, still with them.
Hutch also appeared to notice the onset of the green incandescence upon the heart monitor. As soon as it lit up, he folded his hands and raised them to his mouth, as if he were manifesting an unspoken prayer.
Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack...
The steady clatter of Huggy Bear’s shoes reverberated throughout the sterile corridor in rhythm with the life-signifying heartbeats dancing upon monitor. Dobey noticed Huggy approaching out of the corner of his eye, and gave him a small, sideways glance, but he didn’t dare attempt to look at Huggy directly. Dobey did not consciously realize it, but he feared that seeing the face of his deceased partner reflected in Huggy’s features would betray his unstable stoicism and unravel his emotions. Ironically, Huggy Bear must have been emotionally caught off-guard by seeing something unnerving in Hutch’s appearance, so he addressed Dobey instead.
(Huggy Bear) Captain…
(Dobey) A couple of guys dressed up like officers…(Dobey struggled to take his next breath)…He’s lucky to be alive.
(Huggy Bear) He’s going to be okay…
(Hutch) He’s dying.
In the moment when Dobey heard Hutch verbalize his own worst fears, he suddenly felt his stomach take a nosedive into a bottomless void.
Dobey had never previously experienced Hutch acquiescing to the possibility of Starsky dying. Until now, both of his detectives had always stuck together like glue no matter what they encountered. Despite the odds, they would manage to find a way through. Dobey was usually the one who maintained a more conservative posture. He was the realist who liked to be prepared. He was the one who kept things in perspective and consistently tried to prepare his men to expect, and even accept, the worst-case scenario as far as losing a partner was concerned; but Dobey wasn’t prepared for this. He wasn’t prepared for Hutch to confirm his own ominous fear of impending loss.
In the instant that Hutch spoke those words, Dobey realized that he had come to rely quite heavily on Hutch (and Starsky, for that matter) to keep him from sinking into the mire of his previously broken heart. Standing here, watching Starsky’s life slowly slip away was like having the center of his being wrenched back into the bog of nightmarish memories of Elmo’s gruesome death. Right now, having his heart blackmailed into facing the loss of Elmo again was more than he could bear.
What made Hutch surrender to death so effortlessly the time?
For Dobey, caving into the bleakness of mortality had become all too familiar. He had walked through the Valley of Shadows with many of his men more times than he cared to recount, but, of course, those were just the echoes of his own face-off with grief. Elmo’s death had laid a foundation of devastated hope that left a chasm in his soul. One beautiful morning, death had become a naked, bare fact that had inflicted itself upon Lieutenant Harold Dobey without warning. The truth that such an utterly devastating and soul-shattering loss had happened once before—and that it had happened to him—made Dobey much more resigned to succumbing to death’s embrace. The problem was Death’s sting. Once the venom of Death had invaded Dobey’s heart and injected itself into his veins, its poison weakened and paralyzed him.
Hutch had been faced with the insidiousness of death’s poison once before. Starsky had actually been injected with a lethal compound as part of a hit set-up by a grieving father bent on revenge. Starsky had only about twenty-four hours to live before the poison would completely paralyze him and death would ensue. While Starsky suffered the ravages of the chemical poison, Hutch had suffered a similar fate as the poison of losing Starsky began to worm its way into Hutch’s heart. Yet, Hutch had never given up hope. He had been just as determined to fight for Starsky’s life in the final countdown of time as he had been when he first learned of Starsky’s condition.
So what was it about today that finally made Hutch wink in Death’s direction?
Perhaps it was because the lethal compound had had an antidote.
Dobey could always count on Starsky and Hutch to do everything they could to preserve life—except to give up hope. “If only…” had always kept his two detectives clawing their way towards life… However, today, the chances of “If only...” were slim to none. There was no antidote. The prospect of losing looked like the only option.
For Hutch, reality had finally check-mated hope.
In the moment when Hutch’s sense of hopelessness escaped from his lips, Dobey knew that as his captain and his friend, it was now his turn to help Hutch fight for the sake of life and to rekindle hope in his sorrowing detective; however, Dobey’s optimism wasn’t stalwart enough to rise to the occasion. He did not want to offer empty platitudes when the threatening bereavement felt so inevitable.
Starsky’s dying. You’re right, Hutch. Sometimes partners die. I know that only too well. Sometimes the bad guys win—and you lose—and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Dobey glanced down at Hutch. He looked so helpless. Dobey wished that he could offer some respite to Hutch from within the midst of his disintegrating resolve, but he could not provide any reviving sustenance from the wasteland of his own emotional desolation.
Dobey averted his eyes from Hutch and briefly fastened them on the unresponsive form of David Starsky who hung in a precarious balance between life and death. Dobey hated being forced to witness this horrific exercise in suspended animation. Standing here in the corridor of the sterile hospital and staring at Starsky while the vague hustle and bustle of the hospital accosted his senses didn’t help his mood, either. The whole experience made Dobey feel as if he was standing frozen in the middle of a three-ring circus, his neck craning upward and his eyes straining to discover the outcome of the current high wire act—a Sergeant Dave Starsky—a young performer painstakingly navigating across a thin, fraying tightrope suspended high above the circus floor—without a net. One misstep, and the star of the show would plummet to his…
Dobey imagined that Hutch was caught up in this balancing act as well, finding himself precariously tottering between the life-sustaining promise of “still having” and the doom of a life sentence in the stygian pit of “nevermore”. Along with his partner’s life, Hutch’s heart now dangled over that pit by a fragile thread. Dobey did not have to use his imagination to know what would happen to his detective when that thread snapped in two.
Dobey gritted his teeth and clenched his jaw to try and keep his own emotions in check. He couldn’t break down now. He had to be strong for his men, even when he felt like falling apart. There was nothing he could say.
He stared silently ahead. Right now, his only link to his comatose detective was his steady and unrelenting gaze.
Huggy Bear had something to say about the future prospects.
“No.”
The word almost got caught in Huggy’s throat.
Hutch explained why he was wrong.
(Hutch) He suffered massive damage...
Hutch swallowed hard. This was, indeed, hard to swallow.
(Hutch) ...The body can only withstand…
But Hutch was really talking about the massive damage to his own insides.
(Huggy Bear) Well, there’s a chance. There’s always a chance.
Ah, hope!
Dobey rallied.
(Dobey) Of course there’s a chance. There’s always a chance.
Nice work, Partner.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Separation
The Intensive Care Unit door swung open and the attending surgeon emerged into the corridor from Starsky’s room. Dobey and Hutch instantly converged upon the doctor for some indication of Starsky’s condition. He perceived their concern and responded straight away to their wordless inquiry.
“He’s in a coma.”
Well, Starsky was still alive.
Dobey watched Hutch hurriedly slip past the doctor into the ICU room to be with his partner. Eight-and-a-half hours in an emotional limbo had taken its toll on him and it looked as if Hutch was dying to make up for some lost time.
Dobey wasn’t content just seeing Starsky still breathing and so he conferred with the surgeon about Starsky’s medical status.
“Doctor, can you give me a detailed run-down of his condition and some idea of his prognosis?”
“Well, the officer was hit by three bullets with entrance and exit wounds from back-to-front. The first bullet hit his right, lower torso just above the waist. It penetrated his right kidney, sliced through the center of his liver, a small section of his transverse colon, and the greater part of his gallbladder. We had to remove his gallbladder, but that should not present any problems to his recovery and normal functioning. The second bullet narrowly missed his spine and heart, but it was the main cause of bleeding because it did some significant damage to his liver and caused some minor lacerations to his hepatic veins and inferior vena cava. The third bullet pierced a small section of the liver; a tiny, upper portion of his stomach; and his left lung, fracturing one of his ribs. He currently has a traumatic pneumothorax including a hemothorax—that is a collapsed right lung caused by trapped air and blood between the lung and the chest wall. We are expanding his lung by suction using a plastic chest tube inserted through an incision in his chest. It may take a couple of days to remove all of the trapped air and fluids.”
“From the information we received, a high caliber weapon was used at close range. When high-velocity bullets penetrate the body, they not only result in more internal tissue damage because of the greater force of impact, but they also tend to leave a more contaminated wound track. We removed an extensive amount of debris from the wound track, including some rib fragments left by the fracture from the third bullet, and provided him with a steady regimen of antibiotics to counteract the possibility of any secondary infections, not just from the surgery, but also from the insertion of the chest tube. We will need to keep him in the hospital under close observation to continue to monitor him for any signs of infection beginning to set in.”
“We are currently concerned about the possibility of brain damage due to the high loss of blood and level of shock he was exhibiting upon arrival, but hopefully, the initial CPR he received immediately after he was wounded maintained a satisfactory degree of blood circulation; however, only time will tell. If he does regain consciousness and has not suffered a lowered level of brain functioning, he is still in acute danger from several subsequent medical complications. If your officer had only sustained one major injury, I could give you a better idea of his prognosis, but since he has endured multiple, high-profile medical injuries, it is difficult make a realistic prediction. With each major injury comes an increased degree of complication. At this point, I cannot determine when, or even if, he will recover. We will keep you posted on any significant changes in his condition.”
“Okay, thank you, doctor,” replied Dobey feebly.
Dobey put his hands in his pockets and looked back through the glass observation window at Hutch. Hutch was sitting stiffly on a chair next to Starsky’s immobile body. Dobey noticed that Hutch was mutely surveying his surroundings, or, more accurately, Hutch was trying to take stock of the various instruments of isolating torture that bore a stark witness to his recent solitary confinement in this sterile dungeon.
Starsky’s coma had left each man indefinitely bound and gagged.
When Dobey noticed Hutch’s posture, he instantly recognized that even if Hutch’s body was currently seated in that room, his spirit was presently struggling to remain connected to it.
Dobey knew what it was like to be in a situation so hideous that he had to disconnect from his body and free-float somewhere up-and-to-the-right of reality.
The word ‘coma’ had only one connotation for Dobey—separation. For the moment, both men had become shipwrecked on separate islands. Now, the only question that remained was whether they would remain that way temporarily or be lost at sea indefinitely.
Whatever the outcome, Dobey figured that for now, not one, but two of the men in that ICU room were half-dead. Hutch’s only advantage was that he had his eyes open.
Dobey felt a world-away from his detectives on the other side of the glass. He did not realize it, but his inability to intervene any further on their behalf removed any unconscious permission he had given himself to participate vicariously in their embrace. When death had torn Elmo away from him, Dobey had been left with a gaping hole in his heart that begged to be filled. Dobey had tried to stoically ignore the empty vacuum left behind by Elmo’s absence, but his attempts to cut himself off from this Black Hole by refusing to acknowledge its existence were completely unsuccessful. The only thing that could possibly save him from being sucked into the yawning nothingness that threatened to engulf him was a facsimile—an acceptable substitute—not for Elmo himself (because he dared not hope for that), but for what Dobey had lost through Elmo’s death: connection to the irreplaceable and intense bond of indissoluble partnership.
He had found that Holy Grail in the relationship between Starsky and Hutch. It was not a conscious choice on Dobey’s part, it was simply that his heart knew instinctively what it needed.
Dobey continued to watch helplessly as the semi-detached detectives hovered somewhere between now and never. He noticed Hutch’s eyes scanning the room, trying to take in the alien landscape of Starsky’s present existence.
Was this going to be it?
Would this be Starsky’s final resting place?
Was this going to be Hutch’s last chance to experience life with Starsky…together?
Dobey needed to sit down.
Stunned by Starsky’s prognosis, he nearly staggered over to the waiting area to find a chair. On his way, he noticed that the sign on the wall was a map of the fifth floor.
The fifth floor.
Dobey grunted in disgust. His two detectives should have been on the fifth floor of police headquarters playing ping-pong. That’s where they belonged—not in this sterile hospital. These were not only two good detectives, but they were also really nice young men. They had their whole lives ahead of them. They belonged on a beach enjoying some sun or at a bar having a couple of beers. They had no business being stuck in an Intensive Care Unit while one was strong-armed into witnessing his friend’s life slip away.
What a goddamned waste.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. The real kicker was that only a few weeks previously, both Starsky and Hutch had resigned from the police force. They had decided that they were no longer willing to pay the high price of being police officers. They had experienced enough death and lost enough friends and lovers so that they were finally fed up enough to call it quits. Dobey had hated the prospect of losing two excellent detectives, but he had secretly applauded their decision. In fact, he had actually been relieved to hear of their early retirement—relieved that they would no longer have to put their lives on the line and risk losing each other. He was overjoyed to think that perhaps they would have the happy ending that he would never have and be spared the ceaseless torment of a partner-less existence.
They had their opportunity at life and threw it away—for what?
To serve and protect others? Sure, sure.
But what about him?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Officer Down, Too
Dobey sat in the waiting room, his arms folded, his breathing labored as he stared into the void left by the vacuum of the doctor’s prognosis. Beads of sweat began to pour down his furrowed brow, signifying the tears he was too weary to cry.
Hutch appeared from around the corner. He was dazed and wandering aimlessly, trying to find his way back from the precipice of Starsky’s indefinite coma. Hutch sighted Dobey sitting in the waiting area and with an air of stunned bewilderment lowered himself into a chair next to him.
As soon as Hutch was seated, he immediately pounded his fist into the arm of the chair.
Dobey was too weary to even flinch. He sighed.
(Dobey) You know, there’s not much I can do at Headquarters I can’t do here.
(Hutch) Yeah.
Dobey turned his head to face Hutch who sat staring into the same void, seething.
(Dobey) I think I am going to stay. . .
Hutch nodded in acknowledgement.
Dobey looked down and sighed. It was time for him to be the Realist.
(Dobey) I mean…I think one of us ought to be here…in case we lose him…
He looked over at Hutch again for a brief moment to see how his words were impacting upon him. Hutch was rubbing his forehead with his left middle finger. Hutch’s unspoken message was clear: “F--- you.”
“F--- you, Captain, for telling me words I do not want to hear. F--- you, Starsky for abandoning me. F--- you, whomever-you-are for killing my partner.” Hutch was furious with everybody and nobody in particular for robbing him of his world as he wanted it and needed it to be. Dobey sighed heavily and scratched his forehead in an unconscious mirror of Hutch’s impotent rage. Unable to face the inescapable agony and wrath of the current moment, Dobey absentmindedly rose to his feet. (He would have beaten a hasty exit if he had had his choice, but he wasn’t about to leave Hutch stranded alone in his pain.) He clenched his hands behind his back as if to stretch himself and sat back down again. He couldn’t manage to make eye contact with Hutch just yet.
(Dobey) Why don’t you…
Dobey sighed again. Every word was a struggle to say at this point. He looked aside again at Hutch, trying to take in Hutch’s present state of being.
(Dobey) ...go wash up, get something to eat.
(Hutch) Yeah.
Hutch rose up angrily out of his chair.
(Dobey) Catch up with Huggy, he just went for some coffee.
Hutch looked around like a lost little boy. A nurse walked past him.
(Hutch) Excuse me…ah…where’s the men’s room?
The nurse nodded towards door across the hall. Hutch halted momentarily, then walked back over to Dobey.
(Hutch) Captain...you want something to eat?
Dobey sighed heavily and shook his head, barely looking up. Hutch left to use the restroom.
Bang, bang, bang…
The next thing Dobey noticed was a crash and heavy footsteps in the hospital corridor. Instinctively, he hurriedly got up to see what was going on. He peered around the corner in time to see two uniformed police officers chasing a man through the doors at the end of the hallway. Then he noticed Hutch on the floor, half-conscious. Dobey’s heart screamed.
Oh, God…Officer down!
This can’t be happening.
Not twice in one day.
Not again.
Not Hutch.
Dobey ran over to his floored detective and knelt down on the floor. Hutch looked extremely dazed and disoriented.
Dobey screamed, “Hutchinson! Are you all right? Speak to me! What happened?”
“He’s dead, Captain,” replied Hutch groggily. “Hit in the head…”
“Who’s dead? Who’s dead, Hutchinson?” Dobey demanded. “What’s wrong with your head?”
“The doctor—the doctor in the men’s room,” said Hutch pointing to the men’s room as he struggled to get up. “The man I was chasing killed a doctor and switched clothes with him. I think he was heading for Starsky’s room. I’m okay, Captain, I just got the wind knocked out of me. Help me up, will ya?”
Hutch attempted to sit up slowly, but he was still rather woozy from being kneed by the hit man. The room went spinning and so did Hutch who fell backward and hit his head on the floor as he did so.
Dobey flagged down a nurse.
“Nurse, over here! I have a man down. He needs immediate medical attention.”
The nurse quickly responded and came over to check on the supine Sergeant.
“I’m okay,” insisted Hutch, trying to thwart the efforts of the frantic captain and the bewildered nurse. “I just got a little dizzy, that’s all.”
“Hutchinson, you’re not okay!” screeched Dobey. “I’m not going to have two officers dying on me! Now be reasonable and let the medical staff take a look at you! As of now, I am putting both Starsky and you under police protective custody and we will set up a perimeter right here in the hospital. I don’t want you to leave my sight until we can figure out who’s behind all of this.”
“Captain, you can’t do that!” protested Hutch. “Starsky’s killers...ah…intended killers… are still out there. I can’t sit around here while they are still on the loose. We’ve got to find them before we run out of time!”
“Hutchinson, your time is already up! We’ve got Bay City’s finest out there working on this right now. You’re too close to this to get involved.”
Where had Dobey heard that before?
Hutch’s face was beginning to turn just as red as Dobey’s.
“Look Captain, I’m already involved. I got involved when someone pumped my partner full of lead this afternoon. I’m not about to sit idly around and do nothing except watch Starsky dying on some goddamned hospital bed!”
Dobey wasn’t about to sit idly around and watch Hutch get killed like a duck in some goddamned shooting gallery. Right now, Dobey was sick to death of his perfectly good police officers getting shot for no perfectly good reason. His patience was up.
Dobey got right up into Hutch’s face and bellowed as loud as he could, “Look, Hutchinson, you go get medical attention and that’s an order and I don’t want to hear anything else about it!”
Hutch was about to say something else, but he thought twice about it. He glared long and hard at Dobey and then shrugged exasperatedly. Dobey and the nurse helped Hutch slowly to his feet. The nurse held tightly onto Hutch’s arm to lead him down the hall towards an examination room. Dobey knew that he hadn’t heard the last of this conversation.
Dobey scratched his head and sighed deeply. Hell, if it were his partner dying, he would have been doing and saying the same things...if he had had the chance.
Dobey went to make some phone calls to Police Headquarters.
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Minus One
Dobey hung up the phone after his last police business transaction and looked his watch. It was about 9:00pm. Did he have enough time to get another cup of coffee before the police personnel and equipment arrived? He finally sighed and slumped, dog-tired, into a chair in the waiting area. He couldn’t think anymore. With his brain temporarily out of his way, his heart now had a window of opportunity to poke its head into view.
Edith. Shoot! I forgot to call her and tell her what happened.
Dobey had no idea how he was going to break the news to his family, especially Rosie. He decided to call and let Edith know that she should not expect him home that evening. He would give them more details when he saw them in person. At the moment, he felt too edgy and raw to deal with his family’s reaction to the distressing events of the day.
He picked up the receiver and slowly dialed his home number. The next voice he heard was that of his wife.
“Hello?”
“Edith, it’s me.”
“Oh, Harold, I was getting worried. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Look, I have some serious police business to attend to and I probably won’t be home tonight until extremely late.”
“Does it have to do with the story on the news tonight of the policeman getting shot today? They didn’t release the name of the officer or his precinct. Do you know who it was?”
Dobey nearly choked as his heart leapt into his throat. He cleared his throat and tried to sound nonchalant.
“I can’t go into any details now, Edith. Let’s talk further when I get home. Are the kids okay?”
“Cal is upstairs doing his homework. I put Rosie to bed an hour ago. She wanted to stay up as late as possible so that she could kiss you goodnight, but I finally told her that she had to go to sleep and that you would kiss her when you got home.”
“Okay. Good night, Edith. Don't wait up for me. Bye.”
Dobey quickly hung up the phone before his voice began to waver any further. He thought of how the news of Starsky’s death might affect his family. He figured that Rosie might take the news especially hard because she had become rather attached to both Starsky and Hutch. Thinking about Rosie and how he might share the startling news with her reminded Dobey again of the morning he learned about Elmo’s death. Little Rosie would go to bed assuming that Uncle Dave was alive and well and wake up the next morning to learn that he had perished while she slept. How would that affect her? Would she learn to dread going to sleep at night, believing that someone she loved would be dead by the time she woke up? And what about the nightmares? How could he soothe and comfort what felt completely inconsolable? He knew that he had to remain strong and try to hold things together for everyone, but who was going to console the consoler? He wished that Elmo was here now.
A Styrofoam cup filled with hot brown liquid unexpectedly appeared in front of him.
“I got you a cup of coffee, Captain.”
Dobey looked up to see Huggy standing over him. Huggy’s big, chocolate brown eyes shone with compassion and concern. Dobey received the drink offering gladly.
“Thanks, Hug.”
This act of kindness elicited a sudden pang of guilt within Dobey. He hadn’t always treated Huggy with the utmost respect. On the surface, his apparent disdain for Huggy seemed to be based on Huggy’s sordid background in crime, at least, that’s what he told himself. Yet, the real issue was that Dobey struggled to keep this Elmo look-alike as emotionally far away from him as possible. Not only could he not bear to face the bad memories associated with Elmo’s death, he could not even stand to be reminded of the good memories of his life with Elmo. Ironically, the times with Elmo that had once nourished him and had given him the most joy were the most painful memories to endure because calling them to mind only underscored what he had lost.
Dobey would have given anything for another chance to reconnect with Elmo. Anything. What he didn’t know was that the only way to do that would be to allow himself to get in touch with the closed-off pain within his own heart. The pain of being forced to endure horrific circumstances in isolation was the main source of his suffering.
Huggy sat down next to Dobey. He quickly surveyed the waiting area and asked, “Where’s Hutch?”
“He’s with a nurse.”
Huggy grinned and declared, “How can he think about women at a time like this?
“He damn near got himself killed,” replied Dobey, flatly.
“Whoa, hold on there! What are you talking about, Captain?” interrogated Huggy, the worry in his voice rising. “What happened?”
“There was a hit man in the hospital—dressed as a doctor, sent to finish the job. Hutch intercepted him on his way to Starsky’s room.”
“Right here in the hospital?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Captain, what are we gonna do?”
Dobey glared over at Huggy. “I don’t know what you are going to do, but I am setting up a police periphery and command center here in the hospital so that I can prevent anything like that from happening again. Meanwhile, you stay out of the way.”
“Yeah, sure,” said Huggy. “Is Hutch okay?”
“For now,” grumbled Dobey. “As long as I have any say about it.”
It suddenly occurred to Dobey how hollow his declaration sounded. What would he do if Hutch were determined to pursue Starsky’s case no matter what? He was kidding himself to think that there was any ‘if’ involved.
The damn fool is probably going to risk his life, no matter what I do.
Dobey took a long sip of his coffee as he weighed his options.
Hutch was the intellectual and the more rational detective of the duo, so Dobey wondered if he could reason with him. However, the rules of Starsky and Hutch’s ping-pong game were currently overriding Hutch’s rationality. Hutch couldn’t do anything further for his partner, but he could fight back against the guilty parties. He was putting his own life in mortal jeopardy because he couldn’t do anything else. Being at the mercy of unknown assailants was bad enough, but hanging around and doing nothing about it was excruciating.
Dobey knew this firsthand. The agony of his own powerlessness and his own subjection had nearly eaten him alive. What had made Elmo’s death the most traumatic to him was his utter sense of helplessness relation to it. Looking back, if he had been given a task to do to make him feel connected to what had happened to him, he would have been able to face his loss with dignity and retain a more hopeful outlook on his friend’s death. By sitting on the sidelines, it felt as if he had never been given a way to redeem himself for allowing Elmo to die such a hideous death in the first place. Dobey’s outer alienation from his experience had produced an inner alienation, both from others and from himself.
Once Dobey was minus one table tennis partner and his well-intentioned superiors had tied both of his hands behind his back, he quickly learned that the only way to win the ping-pong game was not to play it at all.
He figured that he would try to talk some sense into Hutch, otherwise, the best he could do would be to try to prevent Hutch from falling victim to despair. It seemed like the lesser of the two evils.
How was he going to accomplish this? As police captain, he would be remiss in his duties if he did not follow protocol. In addition, his own conscience would not permit him to dismiss precautionary measures. He would need a partner-in-crime to assist him.
Dobey looked over at Huggy.
“Huggy, did you come over to the hospital in your own car?”
“No, Captain. I was out-of-town with a friend when I got the news about Starsky. I had him drop me off at the hospital as soon as we could get here.”
Dobey fished in his pocket and pulled out his car keys.
“Here,” he said, handing the keys to Huggy. “I’m going to be tied-up here at the hospital for awhile. If Hutch needs a ride anywhere, tell him he can use my car.”
“Yeah, sure,” replied Huggy, slightly surprised as he accepted the keys, “That’s cool.”
Dobey leaned back in his chair and took another sip of coffee.
Hutch must be chomping at the bit by now.
Dobey smiled to himself as he thought about the poor medical staff currently faced with the challenge of pinning down their impatient patient while they tried to examine his head. Dobey hoped that the medical examination might delay Hutch long enough for him to establish his hospital beachhead in peace...but he was about to be thoroughly disappointed.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Partners
Boom, boom, boom…
Dobey’s head was pounding. He could not escape the sound of the heavy footsteps of the fervent blond detective who was currently dogging his every move in an attempt to gain approval for his solo crusade.
(Dobey to Hutch) Now don’t tell me…
Dobey was distracted a moment by two uniformed officers carrying in a Mobile Police Communications Unit.
(Dobey to officers) That goes over here…
(Hutch) Captain...
(Dobey) I know what’s going on out there better than you. That’s all I’m trying to say.
(Hutch) I don’t want to sit around here, Captain, and wait for them to make another move.
(Dobey) Well, at this point in time we don’t have much of a choice, do we?
(Hutch) We do too!
(Huggy) Hutch…
(Hutch) We take the offensive. (To Huggy Bear) What?
(Dobey) How? Who? Where? We don’t even know who they are!
(Huggy to Hutch) I’ve got a car, lower level garage.
(Hutch) Captain, we find out!
(Dobey) How?
(Hutch) We go out and look for them.
(Dobey) With what? A bullet in the head? It’s not just Starsky they want—they want you! Hutch, if you go out there now it’s going to be like shooting a duck in a barrel! Now, come on! Be calm! Calm down and wait until I can find you a new partner!
No, Dobey hadn’t meant to say that. He had only intended to prevent Hutch from unnecessarily risking his life, but his statement was a dead giveaway.
Hutch glowered at Dobey for a silent and painful moment as each man grappled with the menacing specter of death that hovered over them and beckoned with its bony finger. The good news was that Hutch now rallied on the side of hope. Pushed up against the worst possible eventuality, Dobey’s unwitting concession to Death’s vice-grip upon him made Hutch decide to which partner he would finally give his heart.
There was no way that Hutch was going to forfeit the ping-pong match.
(Hutch) I already got a partner…
Torrents of stinging, sharp missiles of pain shot upwards through Dobey’s chest like bats out of hell and pierced his eyes from the inside as his face betrayed the anguish of Death’s chokehold upon his heart.
(Hutch) …I don’t need another one.
However, Hutch wasn’t fooled into thinking that Dobey had only his best interests in mind. He stomped out of Dobey’s presence while he was still able to maintain his precarious emotional toehold as Starsky’s partner.
Dobey stood there briefly dumbfounded by the weight of his emotional exchange with Hutch. He knew that he had to let Hutch go on his mission of justice, but he remained resolute about his directive and his role in trying to watch over his men. Hutch needed a partner and that was final. Whom could he send? The only image of a partner that was filling his mind at the moment was Elmo. Great. If Elmo were here he would send Elmo with Hutch. Dobey looked up.
Ah, Elmo!
Dobey waved his finger in Hutch’s direction and shouted at Huggy Bear…
“Don’t be standing there…Get out there with him!”
Dobey watched the young, thin black man turn his back and retreat in pursuit of the zealous police partner. As Huggy turned the corner and vanished out of sight, Dobey’s mind flashed back to the last time he saw Elmo alive.
Elmo and he had just finished a midnight conversation in Dobey’s car concerning their undercover operation at Stryker’s meatpacking plant. Just before Elmo got out of the Station Wagon he said to Dobey,
“Be careful, Man, these guys play for keeps.”
Dobey had replied, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. See you later.”
See you later.
As Dobey thought about it, there were a million “last words” that he could have said to his partner. Couldn’t it have been something more poetic than that? The very phrase was a slap in the face.
What about Hutch?
Wait until I find you another partner…
Dobey shuddered.
The damn fool is going to get himself killed.
At the moment, Dobey could not come up with anything more poetic concerning Hutch either.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Doppelganger
Dobey had just finished setting up the Mobile Police Communications Unit when Huggy returned from the parking garage.
“Hey, Cap, I did what you told me.”
Huggy plopped down into a chair next to the makeshift Police Operations Center. Dobey spun around and hollered at Huggy.
“I told you to go with him! What are you coming back here for?”
Huggy leaned forward with an astonished look upon his face and threw up his hands in exasperation.
“What did you expect me to do, Captain? Babysitting Hutch all the way down to Parking Garage Level Three was as far as I was going to go. Do you think that I’m crazy enough to act like I’ve got a badge, or is the City ready to start paying me a salary to get thrown into a shooting gallery?”
Dobey grunted. His expectations had been way out of line.
“Sorry, Huggy, I guess I’m a little edgy.”
“Yeah, we’re all a little edgy.”
Dobey distracted himself by readjusting and rechecking the controls on the Communications Unit. He cleared his throat and finally blurted out,
“Was Hutch all right when you left him?”
Huggy glowered at the police captain. “He was as all right as can be expected for someone whose best friend is dying.” Then he added, “Do you know anything about that, Captain?”
Dobey was silent.
Huggy leaned back in the chair and mused to himself, “Geez, first Lionel and now Starsky. Man, I hope Hutch knows what he’s doing. I can’t take much more of this.”
The Mobile Communications Unit signaled that a call was coming in. Dobey picked up the receiver.
(Dobey) Hutchinson, where are you and what’s going on?
Hutch sounded somewhat unnerved as his voice crackled over the loudspeaker.
(Hutch) Look, just get me a patrol car and ambulance on the...ah, ah…third level of the County Hospital Garage.
(Dobey) That’s right here.
(Hutch) No kidding.
(Dobey) What?!
(Hutch) Brown. Brown. Jenny Brown. I want you to take her name and run it through the computer. I want the results immediately.
Huggy got up from his chair and took the communications receiver from Dobey.
(Huggy) Hutch, this is Huggy. Did you say Jenny Brown?
(Hutch) Right, what’s it to you?
(Huggy) Well, it’s gotta be her, then.
(Hutch) Who?
(Huggy) Well, she’s the Muhammad Ali of the modeling world. She’s been on the cover of Vogue, Cosmopolitan, you-name-it…
(Hutch) I just did.
Dobey called into Headquarters and had them run Jenny Brown’s name through their database. When he obtained the information about her present location, he relayed the information to Hutch on his car radio. After Dobey had told Hutch one more time to make sure that he got his car back in one piece, he signed off and heaved a huge sigh.
“Well, I guess that’s it.”
“What do you mean, Captain?” questioned Huggy.
“It’s out of our hands, now. There’s nothing more that I can do. The only thing left to do is to sit and wait around for more bad news.”
“You act as if Starsky is already dead and buried. You can’t give up on him now.” The only response Dobey gave was a shrug punctuated by a vague look of dismay. He sighed and settled back in his chair, folding his hands across his belly.
“Do you want another cup of coffee, Captain?”
Dobey sighed and replied weakly, “No thanks, Elmo. Not right now.”
“Elmo?” queried Huggy in surprise.
“What?”
“You just called me Elmo.”
“Sorry, Huggy,” responded Dobey, not sure what to say next.
“You mean Elmo Jackson?”
“Right.”
“Wow, that goes awhile back. What made you think of him now in connection to me?”
Dobey hesitated, then said quietly, “You look like him.”
“Do you think so? Well, if I recall, he was a really good-looking dude,” Huggy said with a grin.
Both Huggy and Dobey broke into laughter.
“Well,” chuckled Dobey, “I don’t know about that, but there’s a close association, that’s all.”
“Close association, huh?” Huggy’s face took on an air of unexpected seriousness, “You and Elmo were close friends, weren’t you? I guess you do know something about what we were talking about before. ”
Dobey changed the subject. “Maybe this is a good time for that coffee break.”
“Yeah, sure,” retorted Huggy. “We could both use a break.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN Hanging
Code Blue, Station One…Code Blue
Dobey had been lost in his thoughts when he was startled by the distress call blasting over the hospital intercom.
Code Blue, Station One…Code Blue
Having been snatched brusquely from his musings, Dobey watched with a growing apprehension as a stream of medical and police personnel began to trickle past him. Although his mind did not allow him to consciously realize where they were heading, he promptly arose from his chair and became swept up in the steadily increasing flow of respondents who terminated their course at Starsky’s room. It was here that Dobey came to a dead stop in front of the viewing window.
(Doctor) What you got?
(Nurse) Cardiac arrest.
(Doctor) Get the board. Get it underneath...that’s it...
Dobey stared blankly at the process unfolding before him. It wasn’t until he saw the medical team lift Starsky’s body and suspend him halfway off the bed to prepare him for chest compressions that Dobey began to feel the full impact of what was taking place before him.
In that moment, Dobey descended into one of the tortures of his howling heart.
Si-mone, Si-mone, Si-mone...
The chanting had emanated from the Simon-Marcus-possessed automatons strewn about the courthouse steps. The dedicated worshippers of this fiend polluted the air with their mindless adoration, endlessly spewing his revered name in broadcast of their unquestioning fidelity.
As he walked up the courthouse steps to attend the sentencing hearing for Simon Marcus, Dobey had felt shivers run up-and-down his spine as the monotonous droning echoed around him. By the time he had seated himself in the front row of the courtroom to await Starsky and Hutch’s arrival, he felt completely saturated by Simon’s despicable name. What was worse was that by the time the sentencing hearing was about to begin, only half of his pair of detectives was in the courtroom before the judge arrived. Starsky had come in with Hutch, but had made a quick detour run to the john. Dobey knew that Starsky went to use the men’s room because of his superstition that going to the john just before a sentencing would bring him good luck. However, on that day, Starsky was out of luck altogether. Afterwards, it was determined that as soon as Starsky had set foot in the men’s room, he was ambushed by Marcus’ followers, knocked unconscious, and then taken hostage. As a parting note, the kidnappers had scrawled Starsky’s name on the bathroom mirror in blood for the effect.
It was a well-executed plan. Not only did Starsky disappear without a trace, but Marcus’ horde made themselves scarce as well.
Everyone has a talent. Simon Marcus’ talent was abject cruelty. He knew exactly how to dismantle a person’s strengths by manipulating them at the point of their greatest vulnerability. Exactly at the moment when Hutch and Dobey felt that they had gotten Simon right where they wanted him, Simon turned the tables on them. Simon’s coup over Hutch and Dobey came in the form of a note with only two words on it:
“Where’s Starsky?”
Hutch minus Starsky. That was to be the theme for the day.
Simon had both Hutch and Dobey right where he wanted them.
Hutch feared that the blood on the mirror belonged to Starsky and he was sure that if Starsky hadn’t put up a fight, then they must have seriously injured him. A phone call from the kidnappers confirmed Hutch’s worst fears—they demanded that Simon Marcus be released within twenty-four hours or Starsky would be a dead man.
Dobey knew that they could not negotiate for Starsky’s life under these conditions so that put them in a race against time. Without any solid leads as to Starsky’s location, they were left with nothing. Starsky’s life would have been forfeit unless Hutch and he could get to Starsky before they executed him. Ironically, the only hope they had at the moment was to put themselves at the mercy of a malicious madman. That, in and of itself, was an excruciating torture.
Dobey recalled how painful it was for him to watch Hutch’s frantic efforts to locate his missing partner and one instance in particular had uncovered the depth of Hutch’s torment: their conversation immediately following Hutch’s first interrogation of Simon.
As soon as Hutch had exited the prison interrogation room, the obvious expression of frustrated defeat on Hutch’s face clearly revealed that he had gotten nowhere in ascertaining Starsky’s whereabouts. After shutting the interrogation room door behind him, Hutch had prevented the guard from letting Simon leave the room and walked over to where Dobey was leaning against the wall of the prison corridor.
(Dobey) Well?
Hutch was speechless and dumbfounded. Simon had him cornered. Hutch switched tactics to see who was in that corner with him.
(Hutch) What did the judge have to say?
(Dobey) He’s going to hold off until tomorrow at 10:00 am. Any time longer and he feels that...ah...Simon’s lawyer is going to ask for a mistrial.
(Hutch) That gives us, what, twenty-three hours?
Dobey glanced down at this watch.
(Dobey) Well, what do you want to do?
Hutch sighed deeply—he needed to catch his breath. Hutch was all choked up because he was in Simon’s strangle hold. The catch-twenty-two was that Simon was in control because he held Starsky’s life in his hands. This game was not lost on Hutch.
(Hutch) Simon says...
Hutch had laughed at his own punch line, but it wasn’t funny. It was more like a knock-down punch. Hutch’s eyes welled up with tears.
(Hutch)...start at the end.
(Dobey) Start at the end? What does that mean?
Starsky’s kidnapping had been one of Simon’s little games—the kind of game with no winners. In Hutch’s effort to find Starsky within less than a day’s time, he ended up having to submit to Simon’s twisted dictates, only to discover that Simon was leading him on a wild goose chase.
Starting at the end meant that Simon had no intention of letting Starsky go unharmed. He had just gotten started on ending Starsky’s life. The bottom line was that Simon wanted revenge.
But Simon was greedy for more than that. This entire escapade was a contest—a contest of devotion. Simon fully expected his devotees to move heaven and earth in obeisance to his will.
Simon wanted worshippers. He gorged himself upon the effusive praises of his loyal followers and subsisted on their utter devotion to him. His arrest by Starsky and Hutch and subsequent conviction on nine counts of First Degree Murder was about to exile him permanently from his treasured adulation. For this affront, he planned to make Starsky and Hutch pay dearly. Simon was motivated by pure, envious spite. If he was about to be cut off from his devotees, then he felt justified in making Starsky and Hutch suffer a similar fate. (Two could play at this game.)
Simon enjoyed his game. He savored testing Hutch’s devotion to Starsky, knowing that he was planning to take Starsky away from him in the end. His goal was to prolong Hutch’s agony as long as he could. He loved dangling Starsky in front of Hutch (as one might dangle a carrot in front of a donkey to get him moving) just because it put Hutch at his mercy. Of course, in the end, Simon would revel in being mercilessness because they had shown him no mercy.
Yet, even though Simon’s greatest talent was making others play his mind games, he underestimated Hutch’s passion for his partner. Simon might have been playing for keeps, but Hutch was playing for keeps as well, and in the end, Hutch’s determination bested Simon at his own game.
Dobey clearly remembered the long night that Hutch, Huggy, and he had spent in his office trying to decipher Simon’s many enigmatic ramblings from Hutch’s second round of interrogation with him. As it turned out, Huggy’s colorful speech provided the key to unlocking Simon’s ravings. Simon spoke using synonyms.
...I dream of a temple, A temple of the First Kingdom Where only the faithful keep the flame... The faithful and Heavenly Polaris.
(Hutch) Polaris—that’s the North Star.
(Dobey) The Three [sic] Sisters...Big Dipper...
(Hutch) ...Heavens...heavenly...stars...sky...
(Dobey) ...Little Dipper...Star...
(Hutch) ...Star...
(Dobey) Starsky!
(Hutch) Starsky!
The game was up. When the rest of the rhymes were deciphered, they learned that Simon’s followers were holding Starsky at the old civic zoo.
Just as dawn was breaking and the sands of time had just about run out, Dobey and Hutch bolted out of Dobey’s office and made a beeline to the old zoo in Starsky’s Torino (with a well-manned back up squad following close behind in black and white patrol cars). When the posse arrived at the zoo, they could see that several cloaked figures were performing some sort of bizarre ritual high atop a small, elevated rock formation situated in one of the disused habitats. As soon as Hutch skidded the Torino to a stop as close to the ceremony as he could, he jumped out of the car and raced towards where the ritual was taking place. Simultaneously, Dobey ran back around behind the Torino to swiftly coordinate the efforts of the many back-up units of uniformed police officers who had also just pulled up in their squad cars.
After barking his orders and directing his officers to surround and entrap the robed figures, Dobey finally turned around to observe the scene unfolding before him. What he first saw were the backs of many uniformed police personnel converging upon the hooded figures with Hutch in the lead, but what he saw next totally stunned him. There, in the midst of the black-mantled figures was a man—Starsky—hanging suspended over the stones.
In the melee that ensued, Hutch’s attention was so completely focused on rescuing his hanging partner and subduing his captors that he did not notice that his captain never made it on the scene. However, if Hutch had wondered where Dobey was, all he had to do was look behind him. If he had, he would have seen an old police captain collapse upon the ground because his knees had completely buckled out from underneath him.
Both Hutch and Dobey were good cops and both were competent in handling their duties, but on that day, when they were both faced with a man dangling helpless above a cold, stone floor, there was a striking difference between them: one had hope, the other did not.
For Dobey, the entire Simon Marcus affair had been a 24-hour nightmare dreamt with his eyes wide open. For one day, a self-proclaimed anti-Christ had commandeered his life and the lives of his men. In the end, Polaris was found, however, what would have happened if Dobey had lost his star detective and Hutch had lost his North Star?
The entire event left everyone extremely shaken, more than Dobey even realized himself.
The evening after the ordeal with Simon Marcus and Starsky’s kidnapping, Dobey had arrived home completely wiped out. He was getting too old for this. No, this was making him feel old. He had returned to his house that evening determined to wash away the events of the past 48 hours and to renew his spirits by enjoying some hearth and home, but he was unsuccessful in erasing the horrific images that plagued his mind. Even while putting Rosie to bed that night, Dobey’s thoughts continued to wander back to the undue suffering of his detectives and the twisted intents of Simon Marcus and his followers.
Dobey had just finished reading a book to Rosie when he noticed her looking at the stars outside her window. Rosie then asked her father to sing one of her favorite songs to her.
“No, Honey, not tonight. Daddy’s tired,” he had said, but her adorable persistence paid off and he eventually gave in to her request.
“What would you like me to sing to you?” he asked.
She replied, “How about ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’”
“Okay, Sweetheart,” laughed Dobey. “That’s ‘our song’, isn’t it? I’ve been singing that one to you since you were a baby.”
Dobey began to sing the lullaby in his deep, resonant basso voice.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star How I wonder where you are…
Rosie had interrupted him. “No, no, Daddy. That’s not right. It’s ‘How I wonder what you are.’”
When Rosie uttered those words, Dobey’s mind had suddenly gone blank as if it were stuck in an infinite loop in the process of searching for a lost database. For a few seconds, Dobey hung suspended in time, silently staring at his daughter with a bewildered look on his face until his brain finally made all the connections. Without saying a word, Dobey had stumbled from the chair next to Rosie’s bed and hastily exited her room, tears streaming down his face like hot rain.
Now that he was standing dumbfounded in a hospital corridor, on the other side of the looking glass, Dobey was now drowning in grief again. The startling image that had plunged him back into his nightmare was...Starsky...hanging…dead!
This was Elmo all over again.
This was Dobey’s silent scream.
This was his heart hacked in two.
This was the grotesque finale of a life of loving and caring being unceremoniously snuffed out at the hands of inhuman avarice.
This was Dobey’s heart, hanging on a meat hook along with his partner.
Dobey was glad that Hutch was not here to witness this moment. He was glad that Hutch was spared the sight of death’s claws sunk deeply into Starsky’s flesh.
He did not want Hutch to know what it was like to cradle the lifeless body of the one who had once been your world.
CHAPTER TWENTY Ping
Dobey’s mind ran screaming from its horrible recollections only to find itself transported back into his present nightmare. At the moment there was no eluding the searing pain of devastating loss that assaulted him no matter if his eyes were opened or closed.
Dobey looked at his watch, it was 11:40pm.
(Nurse) Doctor, there are no vital signs. We lost him.
The doctor initiated CPR while the medical team prepared to resuscitate the unresponsive detective.
A flaxen-haired intern wheeled in a defibrillator cart. At the doctor’s signal, the same intern took over performing the chest compressions on Starsky’s lifeless body. Forget déjà vu—this was really happening: for the second time that day, a blond endeavored to snatch the brunet’s life from the jaws of death.
Past, present, (and future?) there was nowhere for Dobey to hide. For years, his own memories had been killing him. He had found respite from his inner turmoil by banking his heart on Starsky and Hutch’s welfare, but now he was threatened with losing even that. Being surrounded by this inescapable death knell made Dobey realize what it must feel like to die while hanging naked from a meat hook in a cold meatpacking plant.
Things couldn’t possibly get worse, could they?
A woman’s voice unhooked Dobey from within the prison of his tortured mind…
They could.
(Nurse) Excuse me, Captain Dobey, it’s Detective Hutchinson on the telephone…
Dobey whipped his head around and gaped at the unsolicited messenger.
If he had seen the startled look on his own face, he would immediately have recognized the same expression that he had seen on the face of his captain that fateful afternoon eight years ago.
As Dobey went to pick up the phone, he felt as if he were a dead man walking.
(Hutch) How’s he doing’, Captain?
When Dobey heard Hutch’s trembling voice on the other end of the line, his heart skipped a beat. He didn’t have the heart to share his nightmare with Hutch just yet.
(Dobey) I think you’d better get down here right away, Hutch…Hutch?
All of a sudden, Dobey perceived what he believed to be a series of loud crashes on the other end of the line, and then all he heard was a strange bouncing sound...
Ping—ping—ping…silence
He could have sworn it sounded like the bouncing of a solitary ping-pong ball.
Maybe that’s what a Hutch sounded like without a Starsky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Not Yet
Dobey wearily rose from the chair and walked slowly back to stand in front of the viewing window next to Huggy where all the spectators stood transfixed, waiting to see the final outcome of the medical team’s bid for Starsky’s life.
Dobey dreaded what he might have to say to Hutch when he arrived at the hospital. His mind was racing with thoughts on how he was going to break the bad news to Hutch and how Hutch might react, but he wasn’t having any luck coming up with any way to soften the blow. How do you tell someone that their lifeline has just been cut off for good? Dobey finally decided that no matter what he was going to say, he would help Hutch to get through it. Dobey had been through the loss of a partner and he was still standing, wasn’t he?
Dobey cleared his throat.
Life went on and…well…
Maybe in some ways life went on, but in other ways, it didn’t…
Then he had a crazy thought. He wanted to run downstairs and prevent Hutch from encountering this morbid scene altogether. Dobey wanted to make Hutch flee from the hospital. By doing so, he would provide Hutch some comfort, some hope, and some protection, at least from the images that blatantly blared, “The End”.
The truth was that Dobey was desperately trying to impose a Happy Face upon the hood of The Grim Reaper, but he could not come up with a way to force it to stay on.
There had to be a way to stay on this side of life. He couldn’t let his detectives cross the boundary between now and never. For Hutch’s sake, he dug his fingernails into the threshold.
Dobey knew from Starsky’s kidnapping and the Simon Marcus case was that one thing that enabled Hutch to persevere in his search for Starsky was not knowing for sure where his partner was or how he was doing. Without any concrete evidence of Starsky’s death, Hutch had no reason to give up.
(You see, knowledge is not always a good thing.)
Right at that moment, Dobey was grateful that Hutch wasn’t fully aware yet of the gruesome reality he was about to encounter when he arrived at the hospital. Dobey assured himself that for a few more minutes, Hutch’s heart would still enjoy the benefits of "maybe" before being plunged into the depths of unavoidable despair.
Sometimes it is best not to know where your partner is and how he is doing, especially if you are about to discover him lifeless on a hospital bed right in front of your eyes…
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Playoff
(Doctor) Stop. Nothing. Give me the defibrillator. 400 Watt/seconds. Let’s cut the bandages...Paddles...
It was time for another Paddle-Keeper to take over. This was a new kind of ping-pong game with much higher stakes.
So far Starsky and The Grim Reaper were tied, neck-and-neck. It was time for a sudden-death play-off.
Whack! The ball was hit and it went wild!
Bang, bang, bang…
Heavy footsteps distracted Dobey from his thoughts. He briefly turned his head in time to see Hutch come careening around the corner of the corridor. Dobey braced himself to witness Hutch’s reaction when he saw his partner without a heartbeat, but once again, fate spared him from that trauma.
When Dobey’s attention focused back upon Starsky’s life-and-death drama, he was rewarded by a steady beep, beep, beep of the heart monitor. Hutch skidded to a stop in front of the window.
The doctor exited Starsky’s room with an astonished grin on his face. Hutch, breathless, stared at the doctor, waiting for the worst, while Dobey and Huggy crowded around the doctor for the prognosis.
(Doctor) He’s alive…still not out of it, but I’ll be damned if he isn’t alive.
Apparently, Starsky narrowly won the ping-pong game twice that day.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Aftermath
Alive!
Starsky was still hanging on…
“Captain, what…?” Hutch’s voice trailed off.
“We nearly lost him,” Dobey said without skipping a beat.
Dobey watched Hutch turn and stagger into Starsky’s room as the nurses and interns were clearing away the instruments of Starsky’s revival.
“Excuse me,” said the blond-haired intern to Hutch as he wheeled the crash cart past him and exited out the door.
Hopefully they wouldn’t need those paddles anymore.
Hutch had barely reached Starsky’s bedside and taken his partner’s hand in his when he crumpled to the floor onto his knees. Dobey turned away from the reunion scene just as Hutch erupted into convulsive sobbing out of sheer relief.
Leaving Huggy at the observation window, Dobey wandered slowly down the hallway and back to his makeshift operations center. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got there because at the moment all of it seemed so pointless.
He plopped himself down in the chair in front of the Communications Unit and leaned his elbows upon the table as he ran his fingers through his hair. He had nothing to say. He did not know what to do. He couldn’t protect his men. He could not prevent their suffering. He could not wave a magic wand and make the entire day disappear.
He looked at his watch. It was midnight. The day was gone anyway.
So why were tears now cascading down his cheeks?
Still hanging on…
Still hanging…
Still…
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Hooked
The threatening specter of Death continued to overshadow both Dobey and Hutch and each man had endeavored to flee its menacing presence in his own way, without success. Their desperate attempts to evade Death’s clutches had inevitably led both of them closer to death than they realized.
Dobey had already fled life by retreating within and losing himself in his role as The-One-In-Charge. (How could he possibly take the risk of allowing himself to be that vulnerable again? Yet, in trying to avoid the painful feelings associated with the loss of Elmo, he had become buried alive beneath Elmo’s grave.)
Hutch, on the other hand, wanted a showdown. Faced with a life without Starsky, he was ready to throw down the gauntlet at Death’s feet. He would hunt, rather than be hunted. It was better than waiting around for Death to make the first strike.
Dobey got up from the communications center and fished in his pockets. No handkerchief. It was probably still sitting on the floor of his car, covered in Starsky’s blood. He dabbed his moist eyes with the back of his necktie.
What if Starsky had died? Would Hutch still have pursued Starsky’s assailants? Probably. Hutch knew that they had a contract out on him also—it was kill or be killed. Yet Dobey began to wonder if Hutch would still risk his life to bring Starsky’s assassins to justice if they had only been after Starsky. If Hutch had relentlessly pursued Starsky’s killers, it might have been one way for Hutch to maintain his connection to his partner after death. Maybe Hutch felt as if he owed it to Starsky. No, that wasn’t quite right. If Hutch was following his heart, then it was all about the relationship he had with Starsky and nothing else. Hutch loved Starsky more than his own life and that was the point.
In his own case, why hadn’t he pursued Elmo’s murderers more passionately? Yes, there had been a significant lack of evidence to convict them, but why did he let them off the hook so easily?
His nose was now dripping profusely and he could no longer ignore it. He searched diligently for some sort of tissue or acceptable substitute. He finally settled for some napkins that had been leftover from Huggy’s dinner. As he blew his nose, he tried not to notice the roughness of the paper as it grated against his sensitive skin. He longed for his white handkerchief. Even if he had it now in his possession, he could not have used it. If he had, he would end up with Starsky’s blood on his hands.
That was it.
I have Starsky’s blood on my hands.
No, that wasn’t it.
I have…Elmo’s blood on my hands.
Dobey buried his face in his hands and sobbed the tears that had wanted to pour out of his broken heart for eight years.
He felt responsible for Elmo’s death. He had not felt worthy enough to pursue Elmo any further. Elmo was gone and it was his fault. How could he run after that which he had destroyed? Dobey’s love had not been powerful enough to preserve his life with Elmo.
Did that mean that he loved Elmo any less than Hutch loved Starsky? Dobey had begun to doubt that he had loved Elmo enough to keep him alive. Could his love, care, and protection have possibly prevented Stryker’s henchmen from murdering his best friend? Could his love have possibly kept Elmo alive when his body was mangled beyond repair? It sounded crazy to even think this way. So what was missing? Words—assurance from Elmo that his relationship with him was as deep and as passionate as he had always felt it to be. Never being able to fully embrace his partner and feel fully embraced by him in return had caused his soul to live in permanent exile.
Dobey had loved Elmo enough, but he had never actually expressed that love directly. So what if he had? He could not imagine that Elmo would have run away from him or refused his avowals of love if he had had the courage to declare the depth of his devotion to him. Unrequited love would have been devastating and more than awkward in their professional relationship. However, there was always the danger of whether or not saying “I love you” would be well received. Dobey had never wanted to take that chance and now he was paying for it. Better to be safe than sorry? He wasn’t sure. Even if Dobey declared his love and Elmo had not taken it well, at least he could tell himself later that he was being honest and that he had made the attempt to share his heart. By not taking the risk to love Elmo out in the open, he had robbed himself of the opportunity to be fully loved in return. Now it was killing him.
Given the circumstances surrounding Elmo’s death, it might have been all right if Dobey hadn’t been there when his partner died, especially if he had previously professed the depth of his love to Elmo. The worst slap in the face was that he could not make up for lost time. He did not have a partner dying next to him on a hospital bed. There were no last words, no good-byes, no occasions to tell his partner what he had always wanted to say, and no second chances—all that he had in relation to his partner was emptiness. Dobey didn’t fully realize how much Elmo had meant to him until he lost him and then it was too late. How could he have said to Elmo what he couldn’t admit to himself? Yes, he and Elmo were just doing their jobs, but it wasn’t just about their career. Their work and their lives had become so intertwined that their relationship went way beyond professional constraints.
That is why Dobey felt that it was his duty to protect the bond between Starsky and Hutch. They already experienced the kind of relationship about which he could only dream. He did not want them to lose that relationship and suffer as he had. Then he had an insight. This was solely his own perspective. They were stronger than he. Their love could not be destroyed by death. If one of them perished, their relationship would not have been destroyed in the way that his had been. The only difference between his relationship with Elmo and the relationship between Starsky and Hutch was that Dobey was in doubt. Rather than being able to trust in his own love for Elmo and Elmo’s love for him, his insecurity had necessitated that Dobey follow his friend to his grave and remain trapped with him there. He had been doomed to remain attached to the dead Elmo, rather than the living one.
In the moment that he came to himself, he realized how much he loved his partner, and that was enough. Even if he could not hear the words from Elmo’s lips, he knew that Elmo loved him. In finding his own heart, he was finally able to find Elmo’s as well.
Now that the contents of his broken heart had been fully spilled, healing could begin.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Crossing the Threshold
Dobey’s hands were now filled with a pile of soggy napkins that had served as his makeshift handkerchief. He discarded the disintegrating mound of paper into the wastebasket and began searching around for something else with which to wipe his hands.
He felt someone tapping him on the shoulder.
“Seems like you could use some of these,” Huggy said, handing him a box of tissues.
Dobey accepted the box and said meekly, “Thank you.”
He wiped his hands and face with the soft tissues.
“These are much better than the other tissues you left me,” stated Dobey.
“What?” asked Huggy.
“Never mind,” snapped Dobey. “Look, Huggy, I’m going to take a quick break. If Hutch needs me, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“I don’t think that Hutch is going to leave Starsky’s side again after what just happened,” replied Huggy.
Good. It’s about time.
“Well, I told Hutch that one of us should stay here in case something happened to Starsky. Since Hutch is going to be here awhile, I’m going to head home to wash up and get a change of clothes. I should be back in a couple of hours. See if you can convince Hutch to do the same and get yourselves some dinner while you’re at it. If you get a receipt, I’ll pay for it. I know he hasn’t had anything to eat since the shooting.”
“Have you had any dinner, Captain?”
“No, but I’m not hungry right now,” said Dobey, wearily. “You can use my car again when I return. Call me if there are any changes or significant developments in Starsky’s condition.”
“Will do, Captain. You can count on me,” replied Huggy.
“Thanks for your help, Huggy,” uttered Dobey as he began to walk away from Huggy’s presence, then he spontaneously added, “You’re not so bad after all.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Huggy yelled to Dobey, then he said to himself, “I think…”
Dobey headed to the men’s bathroom on the fifth floor, but when he arrived, there was a uniformed policemen standing at the entrance and yellow police tape across the entrance. Since the doctor’s murder by the hit man the previous day, the police had cordoned it off because it was a crime scene.
“Drat,” huffed Dobey.
He figured that he would try a restroom on one of the lower floors so he continued on his journey towards the elevator. Just as he walked past the barricaded area, the door to the men’s room opened and a team of forensic specialists stepped out into the corridor after concluding their role at the crime scene.
Déjà vu.
He caught them out of the corner of his eye and shuddered. He quickened his pace, hopeful that they would not see him.
Dobey pushed the down button for the elevator while trying to ignore their presence, but they recognized him immediately. A bell signaled the arrival of the elevator car while the doors slid open to allow him entrance.
“Captain Dobey!” One of them hollered, “Hold the elevator for us, will you?”
Dobey boarded the elevator and pressed the next floor down, but held the door open for the Crime Scene Investigators who piled into the car on either side of him.
“Thanks, Captain Dobey,” said the taller of the two.
“No problem,” said Dobey, absentmindedly. “How’s the investigation coming along?”
“Well, we’ve…”
However, Dobey did not hear the rest of what the investigator said. His mind blanked out for a moment and flipped to another channel against his will. The scene that flashed across his mind’s viewing screen was a single ICU hospital bed with the outline of a lone figure upon it traced out in colored plastic tape, the kind of marker used to indicate the last resting place of the body of a homicide victim.
Had circumstances been different, the Forensics Team that now flanked him could have been leaving the scene of Starsky’s murder. Fortunately, it was a murder that never took place because Hutch was there in time to prevent it. Hutch was in the right place at the right time because he had been at his partner’s side when it mattered.
Ding!
“Captain, I believe this is your floor…”
The voice of the tall investigator shook Dobey out of his pensive detour.
“Oh…um…thank you,” said Dobey, stepping off the elevator onto the fourth floor.
The last thing he heard as the elevator doors swished closed behind him was one of the investigators saying,
“See you later…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX On the Edge
It had been harder for Dobey to tell Edith the news about Starsky than he had imagined, but she took it calmly. Dobey did not take the time to go into details with Edith because he wanted to return to the hospital as soon as possible. There was a nagging fear in the back of his mind that Starsky might die before he returned. He kept telling himself that he still had his own life to live despite the circumstances, but it took a Herculean effort for him not to get swept up into the void that was slowly encroaching upon him. Realistically, he knew that there was nothing more he could do for Starsky that wasn’t already being done and he could take whatever time he needed to get washed and changed, but at the same time he couldn’t stand being away from Starsky under these conditions. It felt intolerable to him to think that Starsky might die without him being there. He figured that he owed it to his men to be there for them…well, he owed it to Hutch to be there in case his partner died…heck, he needed to be there because he didn’t want Starsky to die alone…no, he needed to be there because he needed to hold onto Starsky. He felt as if he was about to lose the other half of his heart…
Never mind Hutch—Dobey did not want to imagine a future without Starsky either. Even though he didn’t consciously intend it, he tied Starsky not only to his heart, but also to his past. All of the police officers that had been present at the crime scene of Elmo’s murder had either retired or moved on to assignments in other geographic locations—except Starsky. Starsky was his last vestige of his history with Elmo as his police partner and if Starsky died, a significant part of Dobey’s history would die with him. It was true that Edith and he had interacted with Elmo and his wife, Rose, couple-to-couple, but that relationship had existed on another level for him. Even though Edith and Rose had eventually become close friends through their husbands’ relationship, it was hard for both Edith and he to keep connected with Rose after Elmo’s funeral because she soon moved out-of-state to live near members of her family in her old hometown.
After Elmo’s death, the biggest mistake that Dobey made was assuming that he could just go on with his life by avoiding dealing with the overwhelming tragedy of losing the one person whose love, friendship, and support he had counted on having for the rest of his life. Dobey had never planned on a world without Elmo in it, and now that he was living in one, he really didn’t want to participate. However, no amount of professional detachment, no matter how much he tried to convince himself that his sole motivation was a sense of duty, could possibly make his love for Elmo vanish. Twenty years of devotion couldn’t be erased, no matter how hard he tried. So, without his permission, his heart clung to the next best thing—Starsky. He couldn’t help it. His heart was vulnerable whether he liked it or not, and his heart was wounded whether he faced the pain of it or not. By not allowing himself to experience the full horror of Elmo’s death and the extent of its effect upon him, he had unconsciously doomed his heart to continue its search for his long-lost friend. The upshot of it all was that against his better judgment, he found himself being deeply affected by Starsky without fully knowing why.
Yet even though Dobey’s heart had unconsciously initiated a love affair with Starsky, his heart had grown to love Hutch deeply as well. At first, he appreciated Hutch only in relation to Starsky, but then he grew to value Hutch as an individual. Yet, despite his admiration for Starsky and Hutch as individuals, the key for him was the inseparable bond between them. Watching them and watching out for them took Dobey on the emotional rollercoaster ride of his life—it was exciting, it was rattling, it was excruciatingly intense at times, but it kept him going, and that’s what mattered.
After picking out a new set of clothes and giving Edith a goodnight kiss before she turned over and tried to go back to sleep, he went into the master bathroom and gently closed the door behind him. He looked at himself in the mirror. He looked like a man who had been in one too many losing fights. He felt beat up from the inside out. It was a relief for him to shed his clothes from the previous day. He discarded his day-old garments on the floor with half a mind to burn them so that he would not have to look at them again and be reminded of…never mind.
Dobey stepped into the shower and turned on the water. He placed both his hands on the tiled wall in front of him and leaned into the spray. It was good to feel the hot water pour over his weary body and wash away the grime. As he began to relax a bit, he yawned.
With his mind on autopilot, Dobey’s thoughts fluttered back to his interchange with Hutch about getting him a new partner. How could he have been so stupid? He berated himself for his talent of often saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. He was only trying to protect Hutch—for Starsky’s sake. Didn’t Hutch know that? Permitting Hutch to put his life on the line when they had little to no information about the case had been sheer madness. How was Dobey going to prevent Hutch from acting out of passion and risking his life for nothing? It was bad enough that he stood to lose one fine police officer, but to watch Starsky and Hutch both go down in flames was more than Dobey was willing to allow. Yes, it was intolerable to consider the possibility of Hutch being killed on his watch, but more than that, he dreaded the thought of Hutch tossing his life away in vain. Yet there were worse consequences: if Hutch had been killed and Starsky survived, the result would be a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.
Dobey shook his head violently, as if by doing so he could eradicate this last thought from his mind. It didn’t help. He quickly finished his shower and wrapped himself in a towel as he stepped out into the cloud of warm steam that filled the small room.
After drying himself off, he tucked the towel around his waist and went over to the sink. A thick covering of condensation obliterated his reflection in the mirror. Normally, he would have opened the bathroom door to let out the steam, but he dared not do that lest the light from the bathroom awaken Edith. So he took a tissue from the box sitting on the counter and wiped off the mirror. With the mist removed from his reflection, his tired face was now staring back at him amidst a lesser fog of delicate condensation that beaded in drops and slid down the reflecting pane. He rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand and saw where the blade had cut him the previous morning. He decided against a shave.
While finishing his daily wash routine, he could not stop yawning. His body did not want to be conscious anymore. When was his last cup of coffee? He couldn’t remember. His mind was in a fog. He yawned violently as he started to get dressed which was slow going because he was sticky from the heat of the steam. Beads of sweat began to pour down his face. He reached into his pants pocket and …still no handkerchief. Tissues from the Kleenex box had to serve as a poor substitute. Finally, Dobey put the top of the toilet seat down so that he could sit on it to put on his shoes and socks. After donning his footwear, he remained seated, too tired to bother standing up at the moment. He leaned his elbows on his knees and put his head down for a moment while he massaged the back of his neck with both hands, then he sighed and allowed his hands to fall limp between his legs. Maybe he would rest his eyes for just a short while.
He thought to himself that the one mercy of deciding to stay up all that night was that he would be spared from doing any dreaming.
That was the last thing that went through Dobey’s head before he began to snore.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Star-Crossed
Dobey stretched while he slowly stood to his feet. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes while he picked up his personal items from the bathroom counter—his holster and gun, his badge, the leftover change from his pocket, his wallet and keys, and, oh yes, his handkerchief.
He looked at his watch. It was midnight. That was strange. He put his watch up to his ear to make sure that it was still working…
Tick, tick, tick…
Yes, still ticking. Good.
Yet there was something wrong—the timing wasn’t right. Maybe he could get Hutch to take a look at his watch and fix it for him. He was afraid that he would not be able to get to the hospital in time if his watch didn’t work.
He grabbed his suit coat, turned out the bathroom light, and then tiptoed through his bedroom so as not to wake Edith. Now that he was out in the hallway and his bedroom door was completely closed behind him, it was easy to sneak downstairs without worrying about unnecessarily arousing his family’s peaceful slumber.
He got into his car and sped back to the hospital fearful that he would not be able to find Starsky once he got there. He was driving so fast and he was so preoccupied with his ponderings that he did not notice that the traffic light ahead of him was changing from amber to red. He was going too fast to stop, so he jammed his foot down on the accelerator and barreled through the intersection, oblivious to the dangers of his heedlessness. In fact, every traffic light he encountered on the way to the hospital was red, but he continued to careen through every intersection without ever slowing down.
When he got to the hospital, Dobey skidded to a stop in front of the Emergency Entrance and left the car running with the hazard lights blinking. He ran pell-mell through a maze of seemingly endless hospital corridors before finally reaching the elevator that would take him up to the fifth floor.
When Dobey got to the ICU and ran to the observation window of Starsky’s room, he was greatly relieved to see Hutch still seated at Starsky’s bedside. The room was a bit odd—it was painted a sickly green color. Instead of a heart monitor, there was a large wind-up alarm clock on the shelf above the bed, ticking loudly. Dobey could only see Hutch’ s back because he was seated next to Starsky’s bed facing away from the observation window. Hutch’s arm was extended upon the bed and it looked as if he was holding Starsky’s hand, but upon closer examination, it became clear to Dobey that Hutch was taking Starsky’s pulse.
Another thing that was really odd was that Starsky was wearing red silk pajamas. He was lying on the bed with his eyes closed and the covers pulled up to his chest. Starsky was no longer attached to any form of life support, no tubes, no breathing apparatus, no monitors. Nothing.
RRRRRRRRING!
Suddenly, the alarm clock went off. Hutch slowly turned his head around to look at Dobey, his face was tear-stained and haggard…then Dobey realized that Starsky was dead.
Dobey plastered his face and both palms up against the window and screamed, but he emitted nothing but silence.
In an instant, Dobey was transported into Starsky’s ICU room and found himself with his face and hands touching the floor instead of the windowpane and kneeling, as if he were bowing in deep prayer to some unknown deity. Once he realized where he was, he bolted upright and stood to his feet. He was now standing in back of Hutch, next to Starsky’s bed. He tapped Hutch on the shoulder, but Hutch did not bother to look at him as he said, “It is all my fault. I should have been there for him.”
Dobey wanted to tell Hutch that he did everything for Starsky that he could have possibly done for him. There was nothing else he could have done. However, when he opened his mouth to speak, no words came out. It felt as if someone was choking him and that his tongue was made of cotton.
Hutch picked up Starsky’s hand and placed it on his own heart saying, “I’ll take care of this.” Then he placed Starsky's hand gently back upon the bed, got up, and left the room while completely ignoring Dobey’s presence. As soon as Hutch exited the room and disappeared around the corner, Dobey went over to the bed and stood over Starsky’s body, his hands clasped behind him.
How did this happen? Why didn’t Hutch give him any warning that Starsky wasn’t going to make it?
Dobey couldn’t believe that Starsky was really dead. How could he be sure that this was the end? Something inside him was repulsed at the thought of touching a dead body, but he did not want to make any wrong assumptions. So he reached out his hand and slowly rolled back one of Starsky’s eyelids, to see if there was any response. As soon as he did so, Starsky smiled. Dobey jumped back from the bed, as if he had just seen a ghost.
“Did I scare you?” inquired Starsky, mischievously.
“You nearly gave me a heart attack,” Dobey shot back, trembling with fright and anger.
“Where’s Hutch?”
“He went to find the ones responsible,” replied Dobey, straightening his tie.
“He’ll get himself killed,” screamed Starsky as he swung out of bed, bolted out of the room, and ran down the hallway.
“Wait, Starsky,” hollered Dobey, following him out of the room, “Come back here or you’ll both be killed!”
It was to no avail. Starsky was out of sight before Dobey turned the next corner. Even if Dobey couldn’t see him, he continued to pursue him according to the direction that Starsky was last headed. After sprinting down a seemingly endless labyrinth of corridors, he saw a door ahead of him. It was painted red. He stopped in front of it and wondered if he should knock. He decided to follow the Book on this one. Pulling out his gun, he got into position, yelled, “Police! Open the door!” When he got no response he busted the door open and burst into the room, his gun aimed straight ahead at whatever occupants he might find there.
“You’re just in time,” declared a black, faceless figure.
“Just in time for what?” questioned Dobey, surprised.
“To put him out of his misery,” said the figure, nonchalantly pointing to the floor.
Dobey’s eyes followed the finger of the black figure downwards to see Hutch lying on the floor, hands tied behind his back. The faceless man was pointing a gun at Hutch while pinning him to the ground with his foot on top of Hutch’s back. Hutch did not appear to be putting up any resistance to these circumstances.
“I would never do anything to hurt Hutch,” said Dobey plaintively. “I am here to help him.”
“It’s the only way,” declared the faceless figure.
“Not on my life,” replied Dobey, firmly.
“Then I will have to take care of this the hard way,” stated the black man, lifting his gun and pointing it directly at Dobey.
“Captain, it doesn’t matter anymore,” mumbled Hutch. “You know the right thing to do.”
Dobey pointed his gun at the figure saying, “Put your gun away. I will not be a part of this.”
“Then I will take care of it,” said the dark figure, pointing his gun back down at Hutch and cocking it firmly as if to fire it.
Instinctively, Dobey pumped three bullets into the midsection of the figure standing in front of him.
The figure disappeared.
Looking down, he saw Hutch still lying on the floor, but now a pool of crimson blood was expanding steadily beneath him from three bullet wounds in his back. Dobey froze.
“Hutch!” screamed Starsky as he raced into the room and pushed Dobey aside. Starsky fell onto his hands and knees next to his partner and curled his hand around Hutch’s neck, desperately trying to find a pulse. Starsky looked accusingly up at Dobey and cried, “What did you do?”
“I was trying to protect him,” explained Dobey, falteringly, as he watched the smoke rise from his gun.
Starsky leaned over Hutch’s lifeless body and rolled him over on his back. Then he gently embraced Hutch and lifted him up enough so that he could sit cross-legged on the floor with Hutch in his lap, as if he was a pieta. Cupping Hutch’s cheek in one hand so that he could stare into his friend’s face Starsky whispered, “Hutch, Hutch, come on, Buddy, here I am. You found me. I heard you calling me and now I am here…Hutch? Come back to me. I was trying to get to you before, but I couldn’t reach you. I couldn’t open my eyes, I could not touch you, but I am here now…Hutch?”
Starsky searched his partner’s face in vain for any signs of life. “Hutch, you can’t be dead. If you are, then I’ll never be able to reach you.” Tears began to form in Starsky’s eyes, “Hutch?” he squeaked, “I caught up with you. I’m here now. It’s okay. You can come back. Wake up. Don’t leave me. Wake up.” Starsky gritted his jaw and declared through clenched teeth, “I’m going to be with you even if it kills me.”
Starsky cradled Hutch to his chest and bent over him, weeping uncontrollably. After a short while, Starsky looked up at Dobey, tears coursing down his cheeks, and said solemnly, “Give me your gun.”
Not knowing what else to do, Dobey quickly complied and handed Starsky his weapon.
Without hesitation, Starsky put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Dobey gasped. The gun dropped out of Starsky’s hand as his head fell forward upon Hutch’s chest, blood pouring from his head and cascading down upon his partner until their blood merged together and became part of the indistinguishable mass of red stains spreading across the floor. The two friends had finally caught up with each other.
WHAM!
Dobey heard the door to the room slam shut behind him. He jumped to his feet and rattled the doorknob—it was tightly locked. Turning his head back around, he allowed his gaze to fall back upon the two intermingled bodies that now lay in a mangled and bloodied heap upon the floor. Slowly, he revolved his body around to face them. He reached out his hand and hesitatingly placed his hand upon Starsky’s shoulder, as if to shake him and rouse him out of his self-inflicted oblivion, yet as soon as he touched the scarlet satin of Starsky’s nightwear, it dissolved into sheets of blood that poured down Starsky’s body and disappeared into the folds of Hutch’s garments.
Dobey yanked his hand away from the accusing torrent and hurriedly backed away as he melted into tears for being caught, red-handed, of the unforgivable crime of manslaughter. Scream upon scream issued forth from Dobey’s mouth as he stood transfixed within the gory scene, utterly beside himself with an overwhelming grief at a tragedy he could neither prevent, nor reverse.
It was all his fault.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK…
Who was that knocking on the door behind him?
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK…
He was a dead man, for sure.
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK…
It was about time…
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Vestiges
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK…
Dobey was startled awake from his slumber by heavy knocking on the bathroom door.
“Harold, are you all right in there?” You were making an awful noise.”
“Huh?” Dobey quickly rubbed his face and tried to shake himself awake. “I’m all right, Edith. Sorry to have awakened you.”
He looked at his watch. It was almost 3:30am. There was another knock on the bathroom door.
“Come in, Edith. It’s okay,” shouted Dobey as he stood up and opened the door for his wife. “I guess I fell asleep. I hope it wasn’t for long. I’m sorry that I woke you.”
“I was already awake, Dear,” Edith said soothingly, patting her husband gently on the shoulder. I couldn’t get to sleep. I tried, but I was too upset about Starsky. By the time I heard you run the water in the shower, I had decided to distract myself by reading a novel. You couldn’t have been asleep for long because I hadn’t finished my chapter before I heard you moaning.”
“Moaning?”
“Yes, like muffled screams. It wasn’t the same dream about Elmo, was it?”
“No, I think it was something different,” offered Dobey, yawning widely.
“Anything you want to share?”
He scratched his head and replied pensively, “No, I can’t remember what it was about.”
Dobey really couldn’t recall what he had just dreamt. While he slept, his spidery mind had briefly plumbed the depths of his psyche on a silken thread. When his mind had just begun to spin a web of instincts and images, Edith’s cries had yanked the miniature weaver from its loom, tearing away the essence of the ethereal structure and leaving nothing behind of its presence except a few gossamer strands hanging in the void. All that remained within him was an imperative to get back to the hospital as soon as he could.
Dobey hurriedly snatched up his suit coat, gave Edith a quick peck on the cheek, and exited the bathroom. “I need to go now. Don’t worry about making breakfast for me because I probably won’t be back home for a long time. I’ll call you to check in once in awhile to let you know my status.”
“Okay,” yawned Edith as she followed Harold out into their bedroom. “I have some errands to run in the morning, but I should be home around noon.”
“That’s fine, Edith,” said Dobey as he rushed out of the bedroom. Then he stopped short. “Oh, I nearly forgot…”
Dobey went back to his dresser and opened the top drawer. He rummaged around briefly and then pulled out a white handkerchief and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he picked out another handkerchief and stuffed that into a separate pocket ‘just in case’.
As he headed out the bedroom door, he heard Edith say, “See you later,” but he pretended not to notice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Communication
Dobey made it back to the hospital in record time.
He parked his car in the visitor’s parking lot and wound his way back through the maze of hospital hallways that led him up to the fifth floor and back to Starsky’s ICU room. When he arrived, Hutch was still with Starsky, sitting next to the bed and quietly holding his partner’s hand. Dobey entered the room and Hutch gave a little wave to acknowledge Dobey’s presence.
“Any changes?” inquired Dobey.
“No,” replied Hutch, wearily.
“Say, Hutch, I knew that you were going to be with him for awhile, so I took the time to go home and take a breather. Why don’t you do the same? I’ll stay here with Starsky for as long as necessary and keep you posted on any updates.”
“Yeah, Huggy told me that’s what you were doing. Since you are going to be here, I’ll take Huggy and stop at home and then pick up my own car. I’ll have Huggy drive my car and I’ll bring back yours. That way we won’t have to keep juggling transportation. I’ll be back soon.”
“Take whatever time you need,” answered Dobey.
Hutch momentarily focused his attention back to his partner. His eyes sojourned longingly upon Starsky’s face, seeming to try and take in as much of Starsky’s living presence as he could before he had to leave his side. This small gesture of fondness made Dobey think of what it might be like to enjoy the sustenance of an oasis just before continuing one’s journey through an interminable expanse of desert.
Hutch gave Starsky’s hand one last squeeze and then slowly arose out of his chair. Just then Huggy appeared in the doorway of the room.
“Hey, Cap,” said Huggy.
“Hey, yourself,” replied Dobey.
Hutch stretched and yawned as he said to Huggy, “Hug, why don’t we head to my apartment and pick up my car on the way? If you need to stop at your place we can swing by there.”
“Yeah, that’s cool,” shrugged Huggy. “Maybe I could change into a new set of threads while I’m at it.”
“Hopefully ones with better taste,” quipped Hutch mildly.
“Hey, I’m not going to eat them, just wear them,” answered Huggy with a sly smile as he turned to exit the room.
Hutch slapped Huggy on the back in a friendly gesture as Huggy walked out, then Hutch wheeled back around and said, “Later, Captain.”
“Right,” replied Dobey,” I’ll keep you posted by the car radio.”
Hutch took one last look at his partner, drinking in as much of him as he could before he took his leave. Next, Hutch took a deep breath, steeled himself, and then hurried down the corridor until he disappeared out of sight.
Dobey was now alone with Starsky. He did not feel at all at home in the sterile atmosphere of the bustling hospital. He didn’t belong here. This was a dying place. For him, just being in a hospital room conjured up the myriad faces of police officers that had perished in rooms just like this. Another time, another place, perhaps, but it was all the same. Layer upon layer of tragedy had piled up within him into an indeterminate mass of sorrow defined by a throbbing pain in his chest that wouldn’t go away.
Beep, beep, beep…
The steady pulse of the heart monitor beat its soothing rhythm, its dulcet tones regularly tapping Starsky’s unique Morse Code, his only means of communication with those around him that he was currently maintaining his hold on life.
Sighing, Dobey lowered himself into the chair next to Starsky and settled awkwardly into a bedside vigil. It felt eerie for him to sit so close to this man who already felt a world away. He wished that he knew a way to anchor his detective’s soul to this side of life and insure that Starsky would still be with them by the end of the day.
He reached out to take Starsky’s hand, almost fearing that touching him would somehow squash the remaining strength of the seemingly fragile and vulnerable life lying next to him and snuff out its precarious existence. However, when Dobey tenderly ensconced Starsky’s hand in his, its warmth both rewarded and assured him.
Yet, Dobey wasn’t sure what to do next. He felt as if this was his Big Moment, his opportunity to do what he hadn’t done before, and that if he didn’t act now, this moment would be lost forever. So what was nagging at him?
Then it came to him—if it had been Elmo lying here instead of Starsky, what would he say?
He wasn’t much for big speeches, but he knew what needed to be said. He cleared his throat…
“Starsky, I don’t know if you can hear me or not, but I need to tell you that I love you. I love Hutch too, but I’ve never been able to say that to either one of you. You guys mean more to me than you will ever know…”
He was beginning to choke up.
He continued, “Um…Starsky, if you don’t…ahem…if you can’t hold on, will you do me a favor? In the afterlife, if you see my partner—if you see Elmo—tell him I love him, okay? Will you tell him that for me? Tell him I’m sorry for never sharing my heart…fully with him…I guess that’s all…”
Dobey glanced at Starsky’s face to see if his words had registered at all with him, but he was fairly relieved to notice that Starsky’s expression had not changed in any way. He was also relieved to see that his current surroundings had not changed significantly either.
Good.
Somehow he had feared that opening up the doors of his heart would irrevocably change his world in some catastrophic way.
It did—but not outwardly.
CHAPTER THIRTY The Morning After
A couple of hours later, Hutch returned Dobey’s car in one piece and traded places with him beside the bed, as if the two were sentries involved in the changing of the guard. Thankfully, there had been no significant changes in Starsky’s condition and ‘no news had been good news’. Even so, Dobey was doubly relieved to see Hutch reunited with Starsky, and a similarly relieved expression was evident upon Hutch’s face as he retook his place at Starsky’s side.
Huggy presented himself at this reunion toting a large picnic basket stuffed with whatever prepared foods he could grab at short notice from the kitchen at The Pits. He had offered everyone a really early morning breakfast, but no one was in the mood to eat. Dobey finally excused himself from Starsky’s room and was content to spend the rest of the wee hours of the morning back in his makeshift headquarters where the structure of his police work provided him with more comfortable surroundings.
Luckily, all was quiet on the western front until the regularly scheduled Wednesday workday began to get humming…that’s when the call came in from the station.
(Dobey) [Speaking on the phone] When?
Huggy Bear, seated on the table next to the communication unit, handed Dobey some hot oatmeal, but he refused the offer. Just then, Hutch walked in the room looking exhausted and preoccupied, weary of being stuck in a holding pattern while awaiting the ominous fate of his best friend.
(Dobey) Hold it. [To Hutch] How is he?
Dobey could tell that it was a Herculean effort for Hutch to rouse himself past the inner recesses of his brooding stupor in order to answer his captain’s concern.
(Hutch) He’s…um…holding his own.
Hutch peered briefly into the bag of food that was sitting on the table next to Huggy, but he didn’t find anything that struck his fancy. Pulling his hand out of the bag, he licked some oatmeal off his finger that had clung to it during his inspection.
(Huggy Bear) It’s a light snack. Do you want some?
(Hutch) No thanks.
(Huggy Bear) Okay, I can dig it.
Hutch plunked himself down into a swivel chair by the wall on the opposite side of the room and rested his head back against the picture behind him. Everything in his body ached. It even hurt to breathe.
(Dobey) Okay, I’ll get back to you. [He hung up phone and then spoke to Hutch.] The mechanic that tried to waste you last night in the hospital garage…
(Hutch) Yeah. Did you get him an ID?
(Dobey) Nope. They got to him in his cell at the County—knifed him.
A worried look came over Hutch’s face as he suddenly became very animated. He grabbed the phone next to the couch and redialed the station.
(Hutch) Riley? Hutchinson. Look…ah…Jenny Brown. We booked her last night…wait a second! I want her transferred to maximum security. What? Who sprung her? [Hutch looked at Dobey and Huggy Bear] Yeah, Thanks.
Hutch slammed down the receiver and raced out of the room, leaving Dobey and Huggy staring at one another, trying to hazard a guess as to what had just taken place. The light bulb in Dobey’s head went on first—Hutch was off on another escapade.
Dobey sighed and gazed straight back into Huggy’s eyes. “Huggy?”
As Huggy threw down his breakfast on the table, he declared with an air of defeated resignation, “Yeah, Captain, I know. Go follow him…”
Dobey and Huggy both exchanged a small smile of mutual recognition. As Huggy hopped off the table and headed down the hallway, Dobey called out, “If you do a good job, I’ll double your salary.”
“Double or nothing, it’s all the same,” retorted Huggy as he headed down the hallway in pursuit of the wayward detective.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Wake Up Call
Hutch and Huggy returned to the hospital disheartened from their sleuthing. One of their main suspects turned out to be James Gunther—a name that had struck fear unto Hutch’s heart. Gunther was one of the most powerful men in the country and his far-reaching influence would make it extremely difficult to prosecute him without hard, conclusive evidence. Even worse for Hutch, if Gunther was really responsible for the attempted hits on Starsky’s life and his, then they had a full-scale war on their hands except that Gunther’s army had ten thousand soldiers and their army had only two, half of them out of commission.
When Dobey heard the news about Gunther, he was equally dismayed. The immensity and severity of the situation began to avalanche and overwhelm him. It was difficult enough to maintain a sense of balance and purpose while anticipating the loss of one of his Finest, but knowing that he and Hutch faced the daunting task of taking on an entire empire was a condition that he was not currently prepared to face. This entire state of affairs felt as if he was attempting to clutch a handful of water—no matter how careful he was the water continuously seeped out through his fingers. How could he possibly protect Hutch now?
While Hutch went into Starsky’s room to seek consolation from his partner, Dobey stationed himself at the table in his familiar command center, his head propped up by his hand. Huggy stood next to him leaning over a large picnic basket, trying to deal with his own stress by endeavoring to feed the reluctant captain.
(Huggy Bear) Captain, you gotta eat. You can’t just keep going from day to day without putting something in your stomach. [He pulled out some bananas and offered them to Dobey.] How about some fruit? [Dobey shook his head. Huggy tried another offering.] We got some nice sandwiches…Captain, when is the last time you ate something? Come on, tell me. Yesterday? Today?
(Dobey) [Scratched his head and grimaced as he tried to recall the events of the past two days.] I don’t know, Huggy. I’ve just been drinking a lot of coffee.
(Huggy Bear) Exactly…and all coffee and no solid food makes Captain a very shaky boy! Voila! [Huggy presented Dobey with a wrapped pie. When Dobey did not respond, Huggy Bear tapped him on the wrist with the pie.]
(Dobey) [Solemnly and wearily shaking his head…] No, sorry.
Huggy rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in resignation. He gave up his post at the picnic basket, sauntered moodily over to one of the chairs, and parked himself there to brood in disgusted acquiescence.
Dobey felt badly for Huggy. He would have tried to eat something if he had had the wherewithal to stomach it, but right now, he felt just as badly for himself as he did for Huggy. He was too angry and too scared to eat. With Starsky’s life hanging in the balance, his life was being held in suspense also. If he allowed himself the pleasure of eating, a part of him felt that he would be acting as if nothing was wrong and that life would be going on as usual. If Starsky died, life would not have gone on at all, not the way it was, and certainly not the way he wanted it to be. Would he survive? Sure. However, survival minus Starsky would mean existing with a heart doomed to carry a burden of pain and loss that was even heavier than before. He wondered how much his heart could take. Yes, he would live, but what would be the quality of that life after Starsky?
Never mind himself, what about Hutch? Thinking about Hutch was like looking at himself in a mirror—eight years ago, but worse. Elmo had meant the world to him, but he had a life outside of his police work. On the other hand, Starsky and Hutch were each other’s world.
How would Hutch react the moment his world crumbled before him…?
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiiiii…..!”
Wait a minute! That noise sounded like Hutch screaming. The screams were coming from Starsky’s room.
No!
Dobey’s heart leapt into his throat as he scrambled out of his chair and sprinted down the corridor towards Starsky’s room. Following hot on his heels was Huggy Bear, equally alarmed by Hutch’s impassioned cries.
“He’s…, he’s…”
Hutch was saying something about Starsky, but his voice was muffled and Dobey couldn’t quite make it out…until he got to the room.
…HE’S AWAKE!
Starsky’s eyes were open and a very startled nurse was trying to extricate herself from the ardent embrace of a man just given a reprieve from a fate worse than death.
All of a sudden, life went on…
…and all of the hanging figures were set free from their perches, alive and well.
EPILOGUE
The view was cinder block.
Dobey found himself standing facing a gray wall. He looked to the left and to the right and saw that the cinder block stretched infinitely in both directions. He looked straight up. There was nothing but blue sky. As he directed his eyes back down, he noticed that there were spirals of barbed wire on top of the wall upon its entire length. There were hooks everywhere. He was standing before the wall of a prison compound…
At least, he was outside of his cell.
Better yet, when he turned around, he saw that there was endless, green countryside spreading out before him…
He was outside of the prison altogether.
He was free.
Dobey put his hands in his pockets and began to amble slowly down the gentle, grassy slope. The sun felt warm upon his face and a light breeze wafted the fragrance of roses in his direction, filling the air with a sweet perfume.
“Wait up, Pard.”
Dobey turned around in the direction of the voice. It was Elmo.
“Where are you going?” asked Elmo, grinning.
“Home,” answered Dobey with a smile. “I was looking for you.”
“I’ll show you where you can find me,” replied Elmo as he amicably patted Dobey’s shoulder. “It’s not far from here.”
The two men walked side by side in silence as they traveled along a tiny path that wound through gently rolling hills. Eventually, they came around a bend and Dobey saw a large cemetery sprawling out ahead of them. It was filled with row upon row of tiny white headstones that stretched out as far as the eye could see, much like the Arlington National Cemetery. They wandered through the burial ground until they stopped in front of two gravestones that were larger and more ornate. One gravestone was made of white marble and the other one was made of red granite.
Elmo pointed to the granite marker and indicated, “That’s where you can find me.”
Dobey looked down at the rust-colored gravestone and saw that Elmo’s full name was engraved there, the dates of his birth and death firmly etched into the hard rock. Next to it, the carving on the pallid marble revealed Dobey’s name and the date of his birth, but the date of his death was left blank.
“They are side by side,” declared Dobey firmly.
“Always,” replied Elmo.
Dobey smiled as the two men embraced.
“I have to go,” said Dobey quietly.
“I know,” replied Elmo.
“I’m not ready yet,” sighed Dobey.
“You know where to find me. I’ll be waiting for you,” offered Elmo.
Dobey took a deep breath. While he did so, he also took in the vision of his partner, alive and well…
“Captain, it’s ready…”
It was Huggy’s voice. He was shaking Dobey’s shoulder.
Dobey snorted and mumbled something incoherent about not being ready yet.
“Wake up, Captain! We have to get to the hospital before the night shift is over. Hutch is waiting in the car and the stuffed veal is getting cold. If we are going to give Starsky his ping-pong-winner-dinner, then we have to get a move on.”
As his surroundings came into focus, Dobey realized that he had been dozing off in Giovanni’s Italian restaurant. It had been an extremely long day and it was harder to score a platter of antipasto at two o’clock in the morning than he imagined. However, ever since Starsky had been shot on the premises of Giovanni’s four years previously, the police department had gained a significant amount of leverage with the owners.
“Okay, Thanks, Huggy,” yawned Dobey, rubbing his eyes.
It was another rude awakening, but this one Dobey didn’t mind at all.
THE END
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Copyright © 2005
Parker Center Playground
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