June 13th- In Custody by Dandelion

An excerpt from the novel, “Losing Starsky”

The novel can soon be found at starskyandhutch.info/fiction/

Starsky wouldn’t let Hutch out of the handcuffs. From the moment he’d attached the one bracelet to Hutch’s wrist, he made Hutch wear it throughout their entire stay at the remote cabin. Of course, Starsky used it a couple of times to their benefit: Once, to cuff Hutch to the queen bed’s headboard and have his way with the man. And, again, another time for a similar purpose. But he didn’t remove it, even when they went into town for lunch or shopped for supplies, or even on the day they left the mountain to begin the journey home, having stopped for fuel at a highway filling station, and to browse the mini mart for travel snacks.

Hutch’s pleas to have the cuff taken off him, especially in public, had fallen on deaf ears.

“I like knowing it’s there,” Starsky explained in a hushed voice, “in case I need to use it.”

“You’ve used it plenty.”

“Says you.”

“You can’t leave it on me forever.”

“Can’t I?” Starsky quipped with a snicker.

He certainly set out to do just that.

And, so, there they were at that mountain gas station, waiting for the car to fill up, while they wandered the mini mart collecting edibles, and Hutch trying his best to keep the handcuff, both bracelets attached to the same wrist, under his sleeve so no one would see and ask about it — or assume anything, good, bad, or otherwise.

Starsky, on the other hand, didn’t think about it at all. He only remembered the handcuffs were fastened to his partner when they were near a bed, and there wasn’t one in sight during that excursion. Starsky was carefree that sunny morning, relaxed, and fixated on his decision to either buy peanuts or cashews.

The affable shop clerk tried to help him decide. “Buy both bags,” the amused, older man suggested.

“My partner will eat what I don’t,” Starsky assumed. He set two small bags of nuts on the counter. Of course, Starsky meant his ‘work partner,’ not his boyfriend partner, but he became aware of the distinction when the clerk simply said, “Oh?”

“Police officer,” Starsky said to clarify, realizing only after he said it that the clerk had already assumed it. “That guy over there,” he added, pointing to Hutch who was barely visible on the other side of an aisle.

“I heard a coupla cops bought the old Harmon cabin a short while back,” the clerk recalled. “You guys be them?”

“We guys be them,” Starsky replied. He didn’t want to get into the private details of his life’s journey, despite how friendly the shopkeeper’s intentions appeared, so he let it ride that he and Hutch were detectives and not street officers, and then asked to be pointed in the direction of the cookie counter.

Starsky and Hutch were both at the lowest point in their lives when it came to thoughts about their jobs. The mountain retreat had truly become just that: A refuge from which they escaped the violence and troubling news of their times. It didn’t matter to either of them that they had skills and convictions that had saved lives and prevented murders and gave hope to so many others. On that day, after nearly a week of indulging each other in the fine art of carnal pleasures, they were mentally drained as well. They were simply just a couple of guys.

So Starsky didn’t pick up on the immediate cues. It wasn’t until they were forced on him that he had to snap out of his personal romp through life and transform into what he’d been for most of his adult life: A seasoned police officer.

The jolt came from a light tug on his jacket sleeve, at the elbow, so subtle he only noticed it because he felt the presence of someone near him, someone other than Hutch. So he turned, more curious than alarmed, to investigate the contact.

A nine-year-old girl dressed in an oversized sweatshirt and shorts, dirty hiking boots, and a lopsided pigtail, stood near him, maybe a couple of feet away. She stared into the shelved collection of processed food packages — and didn’t move. Starsky had to glance over his shoulder behind him, and then to his left, as well, because he wasn’t certain the girl was the one who’d tried for his attention. But no one else stood in the aisle.

Hutch was on the other side of the shoulder-height counter, browsing the healthier snacks, whistling while he mused.

So Starsky waited for another cue — to either confirm the one he’d gotten or dismiss it, and instead studied the girl’s posture, noticing only then how frozen she appeared — while he circled back through his mind exactly what he’d felt when she presumably tugged on his sleeve. It hadn’t been an accident, had it? A prank? He looked around again, made eye contact with Hutch from the other side of the counter, got that playful, mischievous wink and shy smile, and then turned further to his right. The only other person in the market, besides the clerk, was a younger, somewhat disheveled man in soiled camouflage clothes who stood with his back to Starsky at the beer cooler.

Starsky closed half the gap between himself and the girl to solicit a reaction so he could better assess the situation — and the one he got both instantly sickened and alarmed him.

“Help,” she whispered, not looking at him, as rigid as she’d been. “Please help me.”

“Is he buying beer?” Starsky quietly asked her, audible only to the girl.

“Yes,” she said, a cry in her voice.

By gut reaction alone, though his mind sped at a hundred miles an hour, Starsky realized he’d just become a critical player in the crime of a child abduction in progress. “Don’t you move,” he firmly told her. “Don’t move a muscle.” He instinctively knew she’d overheard him tell the shopkeeper that he and his partner were police detectives, and that she had reached out to him because of it. She would trust his direction.

“Hutch,” he then called, sounding nonchalant.

Hutch lifted his head from the shelves on the other side of the counter and met Starsky’s eyes with his own. But he, too, transformed immediately into professional mode when he saw the look on his partner’s face. There was no disguising the seriousness of it, no misinterpretation of its meaning was possible. He knew the man that well.

Starsky nodded toward the hunter at the beer cooler. “Take him,” he said. “I’ll get the girl.”

Hutch didn’t need to see the girl to know there was one. The evidence was in Starsky’s narrowed eyes. The conversation was as swift as it was silent — and they were uniformly ready for action.

Starsky watched as Hutch pretended to walk casually around the aisle toward the perp, as if Hutch still shopped for groceries. But the ensuing tackle was anything but casual; it was instantaneous, brutal, noisy — and highly successful. At the same second Hutch grabbed the unsuspecting man around the neck, dropped, and then pinned him to the floor, Starsky grabbed the girl in his arms and ran outside with her.

The moment he seized her, she began to scream, and not because she was terrified of Starsky, but because she was utterly overwhelmed by the relief of her rescue. He knew that because of how tightly she gripped him, her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, how desperately she clung to him, how absolutely heartbreakingly she wailed. He held as tightly to her in reply and, once in the warming sunshine, fought to ease her cries. “Shh,” he repeated, gently rocking her in his safe embrace, “it’s okay now, honey. It’s over. It’s over.” The world around him didn’t seep back in until she had stopped screaming and instead purely sobbed with relief.

Hutch had ordered the clerk outside to guard the girl so Starsky could help him neutralize the suspect. “He said for me to take her,” the shopkeeper explained to Starsky when he caught up with him as instructed. “He needs you in there, he said.”

Starsky raced back into the market, found Hutch on the floor in front of the beer cooler with the immobilized assailant barely struggling beneath him, Hutch’s knee firmly in the guy’s lower back, the suspect’s arm cranked behind him and close to breaking if he further resisted, and Starsky knew Hutch had things under control. “What’dya need me for?” he heatedly asked, somewhat irritated, a snarl in his deep blue eyes. They’d taken care of the situation without the use of their fists or guns, and he’d rather have comforted the victim.

Hutch looked up at him, panting, with a similarly annoyed, sort of reluctantly playful expression in those reprimanding blue eyes, and then said, “I don’t suppose you know where I can find a pair of handcuffs?”