MEMORIES ( PART TWO)
A Glimpse
into the life of Kenneth Richard Hutchinson told from his POV.
Disclaimer:
I do not own the characters of Starsky and Hutch. Just
borrowing them for fun.
PROLOGUE
My name is
Kenneth Richard Hutchinson but the only people who call me Kenneth are my
parents. My younger sister calls me Ken. Everybody else has called me Hutch for
most of my adult life. For the past ten years, I have been an undercover
detective with the
To most
people, I’m the last person they would expect to
become a cop. My family had money, so I was raised
with all the advantages that money can buy. Good schools, a
nice house in a good neighborhood, nice clothes, all the good things in life.
“Good Breeding” is what my grandmother used to call it.
My partner is
always kidding me about having a certain “air of sophistication.” and ‘class”
that shows through in the way I dress and the way I behave. I don’t really see myself that way, although I suppose some of
my tastes in music, clothes and literature are the result of my formative
years. Engrained parts of my personality that I can not
change. It took me years to find out who I really was and to be happy with my
life the way it is today.
I’ve spent my life trying to make a difference. Sometimes I think I
have at least with a few people I’ve known over the
years. I’m not the same wide-eyed, idealistic young
man I used to be. Too many years on the streets of this city have made sure of
that. I’ve become bitter and disillusioned with a lot
of things in my life. I’ve seen so much pain and
suffering, so many people throwing their lives away for a fix and a cheap thrill,
that nothing much fazes me anymore. Some days it takes everything I have to just get out of bed in the morning. Most of the time, I can’t even remember why I ever wanted to be a cop in the
first place.
The only thing
that’s kept me going has been my partner and my best
friend in the whole world, David Starsky. He’s as
close to me as a brother, even closer actually. There’s
no way to explain the unique bond we share. We can communicate without
speaking, almost on a psychic level. With just a look or a glance, we know what
the other one is thinking. We feel each other’s pain, each other’s sorrow and each other’s joy. Together we are complete.
Apart, we are missing a vital part of ourselves. It’s
been that way almost since the first day we met fifteen years ago in the
I came so close
to losing Starsky almost a year ago. The doctors told me he was going to die, that there was nothing they could do. The gunshots to his
body had done massive damage and they didn’t think it
could be repaired. I refused to accept that. I couldn’t
face him dying and being left alone without him by my side. Through some
miracle, he survived, even though he still has not recovered completely from
his injuries. Coming so close to losing the one person that
meant more to me than anything else in the world made me take a closer look at
my own life.
I found myself
thinking about the different events in my life that had shaped it and made me
into the man I am today. And I realized that some
things were more important to me than other things. I have some major life
decisions to make and I hope that this look back on my life and the things I’ve done, the events that have happened that have changed
my focus and my ideals, will help me to make those decisions with a clear mind.
And maybe sharing my memories with you, will help me
decide what I need to do next. So here, is a glimpse
into my life, both past and present.
THE
I was born in
My father
specializes in heart surgery. He has done very well for himself in that
profession. My grandfather and my great grandfather were also doctors so it was
a family tradition that I was expected to follow as
the eldest son. That expectation was pounded into my
head from the time I was a small child. My parents only had two children. Myself and my sister, Karen. She is five years younger than me so we weren’t very close when we were growing up,
although we are today.
My family had
money and we lived quite well. By
My sister and
I seldom saw my father. He had a lucrative practice and spent long hours at his
office and at the hospital. My father came from a generation who believed that
children should be seen and not heard. When he was
home, we were expected to be on our best behavior and
not to speak unless we were spoken to. He was a strict disciplinarian and wasn’t opposed to using the strap on me or my sister if he
felt we were out of line. In our house, his word was final and you were expected to do things his way or not at all. It had been ingrained in my upbringing to obey my father
without question.
Most of the
time, I felt like I was a failure in my father’s eyes. I never felt as if I
lived up to his expectations for me as his son. Even though I was an honor
student, active in sports and various other activities, I never received any
praise from my father for any of my accomplishments. Richard Hutchinson was a
cold, distant and overbearing man. He always succeeded
in pushing my buttons and making me defensive Nothing I’ve done in my life has
ever been good enough for my father but I still continued to jump through hoops
trying to please him, hoping that someday I would make him proud. To this day, my
father and I do not get along and we barely talk to one another.
My mother,
Joanna Hutchinson, married my father when they were both in college. She came
from a similar background except her father was a lawyer. My mother was
involved in various charities, committees and the country club. She also did a
lot of volunteer work. And, like my father, she had
very little time to spend with her children. My sister and I were
basically raised by our nanny and the housekeeper. Mother was seldom
home during the day, although she was there in the evenings. She had a warmer
personality than my father but still seemed mystified
when it came to dealing with her own children. Mother was aware of her standing
in the community and her social status. She reinforced impeccable manners and
good breeding.
As a child, I
had my own room with my own TV, my own stereo, and my own phone line. I went to
the best private school in the area and my friends were
carefully screened. But the one thing I never
felt like I had was love. I can’t remember either one
of my parents ever telling me that they loved me or that they were proud of me.
It was the nanny or the housekeeper that made my meals, got me up for school,
took me to my various activities and tucked me into
bed at night, not my parents. And I thought that was
normal.
I inherited my
good looks from both of my parents equally. My entire family was very
attractive. Personality wise, I am more like my mother than I am my father. The
only trait I share with my father is my aloofness with most people and a strong
drive to succeed. As I got older, I began to resent my parents, especially my
father, and the plans that he had mapped out for the rest of my life. But pride in the
COLLEGE DAYS
My first real
battle with my father came about when it came time for me to go to college. He
expected me to go to
My father was
not happy about my choice and made his feelings well known on the subject. But since I had been offered a full scholarship based on my
academic record, his threat of cutting me off financially wasn’t enough to stop
me. In addition, my grandparents had left me a substantial trust fund that I
would have access to when I turned twenty-one. Once my father finally realized
that he couldn’t stop me from going to the college of
my choice, he reluctantly relented but he never forgave me for refusing to bend
to his will.
When I moved
to
I did not
serve in the military like most young men my age. I was given
a college deferment from the draft. Even if I hadn’t
been given a deferment, I have no doubt that my father would have found a way
to ensure that his son was not drafted into the military. Like so many other
young people my age at the time (especially college students) , I became very
vocal about the military’s involvement in Viet Nam, even participating in
several peaceful youth rallies against the war. It wasn’t until later in life
when I met some men who had served in Viet Nam that I began to understand just
how much they had sacrificed for their involvement in that war.
In spite of my
outside activities, I still maintained a 4.0 average in my college classes. I
carried a full class load and spent long hours studying to maintain my grades. School work had always come easy to me and I was blessed
with an excellent memory, as well as a methodical and logical mind. The
importance of a good education had been installed in
me from an early age.
But that doesn’t mean I didn’t find the time to have fun. I had more
than my share of dates. Girls had always seemed to be attracted to me but I
could never be sure if they were interested in me
because of my good looks, my family’s money, or if they really liked me as a
person. Sometimes, even today, I still don’t know. For
some reason I’ve always tended to be attracted to
women who either overly possessive or cold and distant. Don’t
get me wrong, I love women and I respect them but my relationships just never
seem to work out very well or to last for very long. Just
another reason for my parents to be disappointed in me.
All in all, my college days were good ones and I grew tremendously
as a person. I began to develop my own set of values and ideals that had
nothing to do with those that my father held dear. Slowly, my image of myself and my life began to change. I was in my second year
of college when I met Vanessa Lynn McDonald, the future Mrs. Kenneth
Hutchinson.
VANESSA
Vanessa Lynn
McDonald. A chapter in my life I would rather forget but one that I have to
include in the category of both some of my best and my worst memories. She was
in a literature class I was taking and I was attracted to her immediately. But then, so was every other red blooded man in the room.
She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen with long dark brown
hair and big brown eyes along with the face and the body of a high fashion
model. She was actually doing some modeling on the side when we met.
I should have
seen the signs right away but lust is blind and I ignored her shortcomings
until it was too late. She was fun to be with and she knew just how to wrap a
man around her little finger. She came from a similar background was the
perfect blend of sophistication, cool perfection, and social status. With the
contrast in our coloring, we made a very attractive and photogenic couple. Even
back then, Vanessa was never one to pass up an opportunity to get herself
noticed.
We had been
dating for almost six months when Vanessa told me that she was pregnant. By
then I was head over heels in love with her and her pregnancy gave us the
perfect excuse to get married. Needless to say, my
parents were less then thrilled but they liked Vanessa. That alone should have
clued me in that I was making a big mistake. As far as my father was concerned,
it was just another excuse for him to lecture me on my irresponsibility for
getting her pregnant. As far as my mother was concerned, our wedding became the
social event of the season and she went out all planning it down to the tiniest
detail.
As a married
student, I had to move out of the dorm. Vanessa and I rented a tiny efficiency
apartment not far from campus and tried to adjust to our new status as married
students. It wasn’t long before Vanessa informed me
that she was dropping out of college and that she expected me to continue to
support her in the way she had become accustomed to. So
besides being a full time student, I also took a full time job in the evenings
working at a minimum wage job to support myself and my new bride. It wasn’t long before we started fighting over Vanessa’s
outrageous spending. In less than six weeks, she ran my one credit card up to
over two thousand dollars. She had expensive tastes, especially in clothes.
We had only
been married for three months when Vanessa told me that she had decided she didn’t want to have a child after all and that she’d had an
abortion. I was stunned and deeply hurt. I didn’t
realize how much I had been looking forward to being a father until that was
taken away from me. I suppose most men would have left her or even beat the
hell out of her, but by then I was so wrapped around her finger that I was
willing to let her walk all over me. I had always believed strongly in the
sanctity of marriage and I was determined to make my marriage work, even if I
was the one who had to make all the sacrifices to keep Vanessa happy.
And Vanessa was an expert at manipulating me. She knew just which
buttons to push to get her way. She could be a cold, heartless bitch or a
shameless seductress that knew every all the ways to please a man. If I wanted
any peace in my marriage, I quickly learned to do things her way. I couldn’t see back then what she was doing to my self esteem
and to my confidence. Or just how much like my father
she was. If our marriage was on rocky ground after less than a year, it was
about to really hit the skids when I decided to drop out of college and join
the police academy.
DISINHERITED
I was in my
third year of college when I realized that I was totally
dissatisfied with my life. I wasn’t happy in my
marriage and I was totally disillusioned with pre-med. When a police recruiter
came to the college to speak to the students, I suddenly found myself thinking
about joining the police force. The more I thought about it, the more the idea
appealed to me. I thought that would be a way to really help
people and to make a difference. Idealistic and simplistic but I really started
to believe that was what I was meant to do with my life. Then an ex-girlfriend
of mine got raped and I saw first hand how
compassionate and concerned the cops were that dealt with her attack. That was the deciding factor that helped me make my decision. I
wanted to be a cop.
Needless to say, that decision did not go over well with my parents
or with my wife. My father disinherited me, wrote me completely out of his
will, and swore that he would never speak to me again. His attitude did not
surprise me or even really bother me. What hurt was when my mother took his
side. And my dear wife, screamed at me for days and
said that I was destroying her future and my own. But
she didn’t leave me, not then anyway. She was convinced that eventually she
could get me to change my mind and see the error of my ways. Or
maybe she just wasn’t through making my life miserable yet.
To say that my
life was pretty screwed up when I joined the police
academy would be a vast understatement. That first day, I knew that I was
totally out of my element and that I would have trouble fitting in with the
other cadets. But that was also the day I met a cocky,
self assured, displaced New Yorker who would become the best friend I’ve ever
had. I noticed David Starsky right away. He was hard to miss. That man didn’t just walk into a room; he strutted in with a
confident swagger that automatically set him apart from everyone else. My first
impression was that he was the most irritating and obnoxious man I’d ever met. It took me two weeks to find out that just how
wrong my first impression of Starsky really was.
Starsky and I
could not have been more different. Our backgrounds, our personalities, even
our ideals were direct opposites of one another. While I came from what most
people would consider a cultural background, Starsky was a pure product of the
mean streets of
Where Starsky
seemed to get along with everyone in our class, I was a loner, sticking pretty much
to myself. I know most of the other cadets thought I was overbearing and stuck
up but the truth is I just didn’t know how to relax
and interact with them. There were three cadets, Billy Holmes, Scott Emerson,
and Tommy Barnes, who decided to make my life hell in an attempt to get me to
drop out of the academy. They began harassing me every chance they got.
I had motor
oil poured on my dress uniform while it was hanging in my locker, I had
unnecessary force used against me in some of the training exercises in the
academy gym, I had vulgararities spray painted on my
car, and I had textbooks torn up and destroyed. It all came to a head one
afternoon in the locker room.
I was the only
one in the showers when Billy and his friends came in. I tried to ignore them
but before I knew it, they had me backed into a corner. Now I can hold my own
in a fight when I have to, but Billy and his friends were all my size and
outweighed me by twenty to thirty pounds. Still, I got in a few good punches
before they got me on the floor and started beating the crap out of me. Next
thing I know, I heard a cold, deadly voice say, “Is this a private party? Or
can anybody join in?”
“Get out of
here, Starsky.” I heard Billy snarl through his teeth as he aimed a vicious
kick at my stomach that knocked the wind out of me. “This ain’t any of your
business.”
“How about if I make it my business?” Starsky said in that same calm but deadly voice. “Even up the odds a little?” His
open challenge was all it took for them to forget about me and turn on him.
Starsky was lithe and quick and he could fight as dirty as any street punk when
the situation called for it. Within seconds, Scott was knocked out and lying on
the floor at his feet. I staggered to my feet and took on Tommy while Starsky
squared off with Billy. In a matter of minutes, the fight was over as quickly
as it had began. Shoulder to shoulder, Starsky and I emerged as the victors. Billy and Tommy
grabbed a still groggy Scott, turned tail and ran.
Grabbing my arm, Starsky led me out to my locker so I could clean
up and get dressed. I had a split lip and a gash on my left cheekbone, along with
some nasty bruises on my right side. Leaning back against his own locker which was three down from mine, Starsky watched me
with a faint arrogant smile on his face.
“You handle
yourself pretty good, baby blue.” He said in his
“Yeah, I
noticed.” I said in an irritated voice as I pulled on my pants and reached for
my shirt. “Why’d you help me?”
“Seemed like
the thing to do at the time.” He replied with a shrug of his shoulders and a
crooked smile. “I coulda just let ‘em kick your ass.”
“Why didn’t
you?” I snapped, “You don’t like me any better than they do.”
“Maybe I
didn’t wanna see ya get your pretty face smashed into the floor.” He chuckled
good naturedly “You got a lot to learn if you plan on working the streets
otherwise you ain’t gonna last long out there.” I pointedly ignored him as I
finished dressing, annoyed by his cockiness. He surprised me when he said,
“Come on, slugger. I’ll buy ya a beer.” I was even more surprised when I heard
myself accepting his offer.
We went to a
bar not far from the Academy where most the cadets hung out after classes were done for the day. I was amazed to discover myself
warming up to the curly headed man with the cocky attitude and the crooked
smile. It didn’t take me long to find out that Starsky
had a unique ability to fit in no matter where he was and that he made a
sincere effort to get to know the people around him. Underneath the tough, street smart exterior, he was actually a very complex and
complicated man. I actually found myself liking him and enjoying the time I spent with him. I could talk to him more easily than anyone else I’d ever known, a rarity for me.
Over the next
few weeks, I got to know Starsky even better and we
quickly became friends. Since I was better at academics than Starsky was, I
started helping him with the class work and his grades rapidly improved from
just passing to being in the top ten in the class. In return, he helped me with
some of the more physical exercises like hand-to-hand combat and defense
techniques.
Being friends
with Starsky helped me to fit in better with my fellow cadets too. I went from
being a loner to being part of the gang. Slowly, I began to let down the walls
that I had built around myself over the years and Starsky kept chipping away at
the rest until there were no barriers between the two of us any longer. Starsky
was the one who gave me the nickname ‘Hutch’, stating emphatically that
It didn’t take me long to find out that Starsky was a ‘toucher’, openly affectionate in a way that I was
uncomfortable with at first. He had no hesitation about giving me a friendly
pat on the back or even the ass, to sling his arm around my shoulders when we
were talking, or to push himself into my personal space. Touching came
naturally to Starsky and was just another facet of his unique personality. And with my ‘sterile’ childhood, I was an adult who was
starved for that kind of touch and open expression of affection and friendship.
Some of the other cadets who didn’t care for me or
Starsky (primary Billy and his group of friends) started vicious rumors about
me and Starsky but we blew them off and didn’t let the false accusations bother
us.
Vanessa and I
were still living together but our relationship as man and wife was pretty much
over by then. She hated Starsky with a passion and he wasn’t
fond of her either. He could see through her and she knew it. She also knew
that he was the one person she couldn’t control and
manipulate. The lines between those two were drawn early on
and never changed. When Vanessa finally left me and filed for a divorce,
Starsky was the one who was there to pick up the pieces when I fell apart.
God only knows
why, but I was convinced that I still loved the woman. I realize now that it
was more the idea of a failed marriage that I had trouble dealing with. Just one more thing for my parents to throw up in my face.
It was a long and bitter battle to finally get free
from Vanessa. She used every dirty trick she knew to try and
get her hands on the bulk of my trust fund. It was during that time that I also
found out that she had lied to me from the beginning about being pregnant and
having an abortion. She had used the oldest trick in the book to get me to
marry her and hadn’t even been pregnant to begin with.
When she found out she couldn’t trust my trust fund,
she settled for taking everything else she could, our furniture, my car, all
the money in our joint account. By that point I didn’t
care, I let her have everything. I just wanted my freedom back. Our divorce
became final just after I graduated from the police academy.
Starsky and I
were on probationary status for eighteen months after we graduated. While
Starsky was assigned to work the inner city, I worked
in
Starsky and I
immediately requested to be assigned as partners and
after an initial training period with older more experienced detectives, our
request was granted. We were assigned to a Zebra Unit,
a unique and elite unit that dealt mainly with homicide investigations but
covered over crimes as well. Each Zebra unit had its own assigned section
within the district and Starsky and I were both proud to be designated as Zebra
three.
We quickly
started making a name for ourselves within the department. Because of our close
friendship, we became one of the best teams in the entire department. We
started taking on the tough cases and solving them. Before long, we had the
highest conviction rate in the city. Our methods were
considered unorthodox at best but they got results and we never stepped
over the line. As our reputation grew, so did our friendship.
We became
closer than brothers, joined at the hip, no longer
just friends and partners but the other half of each other’s soul. We had
almost a psychic bond between us that tended to shut out everyone around us. We
often finished each others thoughts or sentences and
communicated in our unique form of shorthand, a simple glance or gesture and we
instantly knew what the other one was going to do without speaking. Side by
side, shoulder to shoulder, we were a force to be reasoned with and one that
nobody dared cross. We were willing to die for each other to protect each other
out there on the streets. Our lives had become so interconnected
and entwined that it was hard to tell where one of us ended and the other one
began. Me and thee against the world, that had become our
motto and it was one that we lived by day by day.
There aren’t any words to even begin to describe how I feel about
Starsky or how much he means to me. I love the man. It’s
as simple and as complicated as that. As simple and as
complicated as the man himself. I know his moods and he knows mine, we
balance each other out and we bring each other peace. We comfort each other, we
care for each other and we protect each other. We know
each other inside and out. We’ve seen each other at
our best and at our worst. We are the best friends either one of us has ever
known or ever will have. Simply put, David Micheal
Starsky is the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. He is the other
half of my soul, without him I am not complete. We are
true soul mates in every sense of the word.
GILLIAN
After my
failed marriage with Vanessa, I was definitely gun shy when it came to women.
Not that I didn’t date, I just shied away from getting
too serious with any of the women I went out with. I had no
intention of ever getting married again. Vanessa had torn out a part of
my heart and left a hole that couldn’t be filled.
I guess my
taste in women left something to be desired. I seemed
to have a tendency to attract every nut case and weirdo out there. One of the
women I dated one time became fixated on me and actually came after me with a
knife. She decided if she couldn’t have me, then
nobody could. Others were self-centered and shallow (almost perfect replicas of
Vanessa) Most of the time Starsky and I both dated flight attendants. No promises, no commitments, no complications. Heck, Starsky and I even shared a woman between us a time or two.
Then I met
Gillian. Gillian Ingram. She was a beautiful blue-eyed blonde
with a lot of class. I actually met her at the park one afternoon where I’d gone on my lunch break while Starsky was busy testifying
in one of our cases. We struck up a conversation and I was pleased when she
agreed to go out to dinner with me. She told me that she was a free lance writer and I had no reason not to believe her.
I think I fell
in love with her almost immediately. She was funny, she was intelligent
and she made me happy. For the first time in years, I felt like a teenager in
love again. And Starsky even seemed to like her when I
introduced them at the bowling alley once night. And
she seemed to like Starsky. That was a definite point in her favor because any
woman who went out with me or Starsky soon discovered
that we were a package deal and if they wanted to have a relationship with us,
they had to accept our friendship and not get jealous or overly possessive when
it came to our unique bond.
At the same time I was seeing Gillian, Starsky and I were also working
on a case involving the harassment of some of the shops and businesses along
“porn row”. We got a tip about a woman named Grossman and her son who had come
into town from
I agreed
(remembering with a grin the girl who had ‘volunteered’ to help him with his
shoulder and her voluptuous figure) I went outside to wait for him in the car.
He came out a few minutes later and I noticed immediately that he seemed to be
distracted. He hadn’t gotten a massage after all. He
said he couldn’t find the girl who had offered and let
it go at that. Now, I’d known Starsky long enough to
know when to back off and let him alone. Something was up but he obviously didn’t want to talk about it. I knew that he would when he
felt like it and not before. Little did I know that my world was about to come
crashing down around me.
Late the
following afternoon, I got a call from dispatch for me to meet Starsky at
Gillian’s apartment. Puzzled, I drove over to her building, a high rise in a
nice neighborhood, and parked behind my partner’s car. When I got to Gillian’s
apartment, I found the door unlocked and went inside. Starsky was standing on
the opposite side of the room, a stricken look on his face. Confused, I asked
him what was wrong and then I saw Gillian’s body lying on the floor beside him,
the front of her blouse stained with blood. I’d been a
cop long enough to know that she was dead.
I sank to the
floor beside her body and pulled her close, all the while firing questions at
my partner trying to find out what was going on. What he told me was the last
thing I expected or wanted to hear. He told me that Gillian worked for Grossman
and his mother. She was a high price prostitute who had come with them from
Starsky told
me that he had seen her at the massage parlor with a ‘customer’. Later, he had
gone to her apartment and confronted her. She promised that she was going to
tell me when I saw her that evening. Starsky told her if she didn’t
tell me that night, he was going to tell me the next morning. We both knew that
she must have told Grossman that she wanted out and that was what had gotten
her killed. My heart was ripped apart but I was still
a cop and I swore to bring Grossman and his mother down.
Starsky and I
went after Grossman in a theatre that they owned, where he had a film playing when
we arrived. A porn film starring my Gillian. He was shot during our confrontation and his mother was
arrested. I found out later that Gillian had gone to Mrs. Grossman to tell her
that she wanted out and that they had gotten into an argument. When she tried
to leave, the older woman had tried to stop her and Gillian had slapped her so
she could get away. Her son had gone after her when he found out and he was the
one who had killed her. The case was solved but my
heart was broken once more.
True to his nature
and our relationship, Starsky was there to pick up the pieces and to help to
put me back together again. But something inside of me
had been broken beyond repair when it came to trusting women. Everything
Gillian had told me was a lie and there was a part of me wondered sometimes if
she had lied about loving me too. Starsky told me several months after she died
that Gillian had made the comment when they spoke that it would be nice to be
me and to have two people (Gillian and Starsky) who loved me so much in one
lifetime. I may have doubted Gillian’s love but I have never doubted the way
Starsky feels about me because I feel the same way about him and I always will.
Women may come and go but Starsky is the one constant in my life and for that I will always be grateful.
BETRAYAL OF TRUST
There was one
woman who came dangerously close to destroying my friendship with Starsky.
Another blue eyed blonde with a dynamite body. She was
a police woman and her name was Kira Reynolds. Starsky
and I had both seen her around headquarters around the same time and we both
flirted with her outrageously. It wasn’t the first
time that we’d had a little friendly competition over the same woman but the
situation with Kira got out of hand pretty quick.
Blonde dancers
at a club downtown were being killed, so the department decided to send me and Starsky into the club as regular customers and Kira
as one of the dancers to try and catch the killer. It was one of those clubs
where the men paid to dance with the girls. I’m sure some
of the dancers weren’t above a little hanky panky on the side if the money was
right but that wasn’t why we were there, so we all kinda looked the other way
on that score. We were there to try and find a
murderer.
And even though I knew that Starsky had gone with Kira a few times,
at the time I didn’t see anything wrong with making a play for her too and she
sure didn’t seem to mind. She came on just as strong with me as she did with
Starsky. And I fell for it. She was a very beautiful
and very sexy woman. I knew that Starsky wasn’t happy
about it but for the first time in our relationship, I ignored my best friend’s
feelings and I went after Kira too. It wasn’t long
before Starsky and I were short tempered with each other and bickering almost
constantly. But I can be as stubborn as my hot headed
partner and neither one of us was willing to back down.
Finally,
Starsky tried to work things out between us. He told me that he was in love
with Kira and that he believed she was in love with him. I was shocked and
surprised to say the least. And I was pissed. I was
pissed because I thought that Kira cared about me too. So
after I left Starsky that morning, I went straight to Kira’s apartment.
When I told
her that Starsky had told me that he loved her and asked her if she loved him,
she just looked at me with a slight smile on her face and told me that she did
love him. I was disappointed but I could accept that and I told her so as I
turned around to leave. That was when she floored me by telling me that she loved
me too. I stood there in stunned silence as I listened to
Kira explain that she was in love with both of us and didn’t see
anything wrong with that. Somehow, she made her warped sense of logic sound
reasonable to me. I’m not proud of myself and how I
acted that day. I let other parts of my anatomy overrule my common sense and I
ended in bed with Kira.
We had just
finished making love and I was getting dressed when Starsky arrived
unexpectedly. I will never forget until the day I die the
hurt look on his face and the pain in his eyes when I walked out of her
bedroom, stuffing my shirt into my jeans with half the buttons still undone.
It doesn’t take much for Starsky to blow up under
normal circumstances and this was anything but normal. I had just betrayed my
best friend. We got into a violent argument that soon led to punches. It would
have been a lot worse except Kira intervened and ordered both of us out of her
apartment. But the damage had already been done and
Starsky and I weren’t talking to each other.
But we were still partners and we still had to work together on our
current cases, including the undercover assignment at the dance hall. Everyone
around us steered clear, knowing immediately that Starsky and I were fighting
with each other. When we went to the dance hall that night, Kira acted as if
nothing had happened, acting the way she always did with both of us, which didn’t help Starsky’s mood or his frame of mind at all. And it didn’t do much for me either. I hated fighting with
Starsky and this time I knew that I had nobody to blame but myself.
We ended up
catching the killer that night, a disabled Viet Nam Vet, who suffered from
delusions and was killing blondes thinking in his
warped mind that they were Viet cong spies who had dyed their hair. He almost
killed everyone in the club when he threw a life grenade into the middle of the
room. I shot him and Starsky grabbed the grenade, throwing it towards a back
room where it exploded without injuring anyone seriously. Our case was officially closed but my relationship with Starsky was
still shaky at best.
A few days
later, Starsky and I both arranged to meet Kira at The Pits, a bar where we
hung out downtown. I was the one who took the first step and apologized to my
outraged partner. He was still deeply hurt and betrayed, with good reason, but
agreed that our friendship meant too much to him to let a woman come between
us. We both realized that Kira had used both of us for her own selfish reasons
and had no intentions of making a commitment to either
one of us. Unfortunately, Starsky was the one who got hurt
by both of us. When Kira met us as arranged, we basically
double teamed her and let her know in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t have
either one of us anymore.
We walked out
of the bar that night with our arms around each other but it still took months
for us to repair the damage that had been done to our
friendship. I had hurt Starsky more deeply than anyone else ever had. I had
betrayed his trust and that trust was a vital part of our partnership and our
relationship. Even after Starsky had told me how he felt about Kira, I had
still gone to her and let her seduce me into her bed. I’m
not putting all the blame on Kira. I’m the one who
chose to go to bed with her. Granted, I never expected Starsky to show up when
he did and catch us but I still betrayed him, something I had never done
before.
We had almost
let a woman destroy the best friendship either one of us had
ever had and we both regretted that deeply. Starsky forgave me because that’s just the way he is. When he cares about someone, he
is fiercely loyal to them and willing to overlook
their faults. But down deep inside, there is still a
part of myself that has never forgiven myself for what I did to him that day. I
can be a selfish bastard at times and that character flaw almost cost me my
best friend. Kira is a subject that Starsky and I carefully avoid discussing
these days. She transferred out of the department shortly after that so
thankfully she wasn’t around as a constant reminder of
my betrayal of my best friend’s trust and love. I know that I don’t deserve a friend like Starsky, not after what I did to
him that day, but I thank god every day that I still have the right to call him
my friend.
A DARK DAY IN MAY
I was on the
passenger’s side of the car waiting for Starsky to unlock the doors so I could
get in when I heard a crunching sound, the kind of sound a car makes when it
hits another car. I glanced up in time to see a black and white pull out of a
parking spot behind us, hitting the car beside it as it did. Instinctively, I
screamed at Starsky to get down and hit the pavement myself, pulling my gun
from beneath my jacket even as I fell. I heard the sound of several gunshots as
the car roared past us. I sprang to my feet and fired after the other car as it
disappeared out of the parking lot but the black and white was already out of
sight. Suddenly, it registered in my mind that I didn’t
hear Starsky returning fire along with me.
“STARSKY!” I screamed as I ran around the front of the car “STARSK!”
I skidded to a stop, my heart pounding with terror when I saw Starsky lying on
the pavement beside the car, his head resting in the rear wheel well. The front
of his shirt was soaked in blood and a puddle was rapidly forming beneath his
still body. For a moment I was too terrified to move,
to terrified to even breathe. I remember falling to my knees in front of him
and reaching out with a trembling hand to press my fingers against the side of
his neck. I frantically searched for a pulse, positive that he was dead. I let
out the breath I didn’t realize that I was even
holding when I felt a faint, fluttering pulse beneath my fingers. He was still
alive but just barely. He was rapidly bleeding out right in front of me. I
could hear the rattling sound in his chest as he struggled to breath, a sound I
knew far too well. The death rattle that someone makes as they
are dying.
Suddenly, I
became aware of people running towards us from every direction. Uniformed officers, undercover officers, Captain Dobey, the
department Doctor. Somehow, they were all there, yelling orders and
trying to access the situation. I felt Dobey taking my arm and gently pulling
me to my feet, away from my dying partner. Briefly, I tried to struggle out of
his grasp, desperate to get back to Starsky’s side. I didn’t
want him to die alone and I knew that he was dying right there in front of me.
“Ken,” Dobey
said gently “Let them take care of him now….” My knees almost gave out on me as
I leaned heavily against my Captain’s side. An ambulance had arrived and the
paramedics were frantically trying to access Starsky’s condition and get him
ready to transport to the hospital. I felt Dobey pulling my arm, leading me
towards his car to take me to the hospital. I followed docilely, my mind numb
and my body going into shock. I barely remember the ride to the hospital. I didn’t even notice that I had Starsky’s blood on my hands,
my shirt and my jeans until we got to the hospital and I noticed the curious
stares from other visitors as we stalked into the emergency room.
The Captain
guided me over to a vacant sofa at the far end of the waiting room and we sat
down to wait for the news that neither one of us wanted to hear. Within half an
hour, the waiting room began to fill up with people as other officers began to
show up to show their support for a fellow officer who had
been mortally wounded. It wasn’t long before
Huggy Bear showed up to join us in our lonely vigil. It was almost two hours
before a doctor finally came out through the swinging doors that led to the
emergency room, his scrubs stained with blood, Starsky’s blood. Before he could
even speak, I was on my feet with the Captain by my side, demanding to know if
my partner, my best friend, was dead.
I was amazed
when the doctor told us that Starsky was still hanging on and had been taken to emergency surgery. He was the one who told
us that Starsky had been shot three times in the torso
and had lost almost half of his blood volume before he got to the hospital.
Even though he was still alive, the prognosis wasn’t
hopeful. Even if he survived the surgery, he still wasn’t
expected to live through the night. The injuries were just too massive and too
severe. His lungs, his stomach, and his kidney’s had all been
compromised. One bullet had actually grazed the sac that surrounded his
heart. My heart felt like it was being ripped out of my chest, leaving behind a
gapping hole, as my mind screamed over and over that
Starsky was dying. He was dying and I had to accept that.
Seven hours
later found me, Huggy and the Captain sitting in the hallway on the Intensive
Care Unit, staring blankly through the large glass window that looked into the
room where Starsky lay on the bed. He was as white as the sheets beneath him, being kept alive by the machines that surrounded the bed and
monitored his vital signs. His stomach and chest was heavily
bandaged and the respirator beside him forced the air in and out of his
lungs. Somehow, he had managed to survive the surgery to repair the worst of
the damage to his body but the doctors still believed that he was going to die.
The human body can only stand so much damage and his injuries were so devastating
and so life threatening, that we all knew we were on a death
watch.
There is no
way to describe how it feels to have someone tell you that you are going to
lose the one person that means more to you than anyone else in the world. A
part dies too, especially when the doctors keep telling you that there’s no hope, no medical miracle that can save him. The
pain cut so deep that I felt like I was dying too and in a way I was. When
Starsky died, the best part of me would die too, leaving only a hollow shell of
a man behind. I had already decided that I would stay there until Starsky drew
his last breath and then I would leave and go home. And
my life would end to, at my own hands. A life I no longer wanted to live if
Starsky wasn’t there by my side.
Sometime during
that long lonely night, I got up to go to the men’s room. I almost collided
with an intern coming out. Excusing myself, I went into the bathroom and leaned
heavily against the sink, splashing some water on my face and watching with
morbid fascination as the water ran red, finally rinsing Starsky’s blood from
my hands. Glancing at my own harried face in the mirror, from the corner of my
eye I saw a man’s leg sticking out from underneath one of the stalls.
Spinning
around, I shoved open the door to the stall and saw a man lying unconscious on
the floor, dressed in white scrub pants and a tee shirt with a stethoscope
hanging around his neck. I raced out of the men’s room, my eyes scanning the
hallway for the intern I had almost collided with on my way into the men’s
room. I saw him disappearing into a room at the end of the room and barreled
down the hall after him. Somehow, my cop’s mind knew that he was there to
finish the job on Starsky. Bursting into the room, I grabbed him and slammed
him back against the wall, relishing the look of fear I saw in his eyes.
He slammed his
knee into my groin, catching me by surprise, and loosening my hold on him long
enough for him to slip away. Even as I staggered out of the doorway behind him,
I saw him running down the hallway with two uniformed officers running after
him. Captain Dobey immediately got on the phone and ordered a round the clock
guard on Starsky’s room. Nobody was allowed in except
me, Dobey, Starsky’s doctors and his primary nurses. I realized that whoever
had tried to kill me and Starsky was still out there
and they were looking to finish the job. The one thing I could do, the only
thing I could do for my fallen partner, was to find out who they were and bring
them down. Then I could end my own life at least knowing that I had brought
them to justice.
Captain Dobey
decided to set up a temporary command post at the hospital so he would be there
when Starsky died and I’d be free to see if I could
find out who had arranged the hit. With Huggy’s help, I found out the name of
the woman who had paid for the hit and immediately went to her apartment. She
refused to tell me anything but I had enough to arrest her for paying for the
hit on the two of us. When I called the hospital to report in to Captain Dobey,
he told me that I needed to get back to the hospital as quickly as I could. I
knew immediately that he was telling me that it was almost over, that Starsky
was dying and that I needed to be there to say good-bye.
I broke every
speed limit in the book to get back to the hospital, slamming though the front
entrance and running through the hallways like my life
depended on it. I skidded to a stop in front of Starsky’s room just as the
doctor was coming out of the room. In a stunned voice, he told me, the Captain
and Huggy that Starsky was still alive. Still not out of the
woods but still alive. I wasn’t sure what had
happened exactly until after the doctor left and the Captain told me that
Starsky had flat lined. His heart had stopped. The trauma team had worked on
him for over six minutes before they finally got his heart started again, just
as I arrived on the floor. I almost collapsed on the floor myself, as my
adrenaline let down. I felt the Captain slipping an arm around my shoulders and
leading me over to a chair. I followed blindly, my heart still pounding
frantically and close to hyperventilating. I said a silent prayer in my mind,
thanking god for not taking Starsky away from me. At least
not yet.
Once I was
certain that he was out of danger, at least for the moment, I hit the streets
again. Over the course of the next two days, I found out that a man named James
Gunther was behind the assassination attempt on Starsky and myself.
Gunter was a powerful and ruthless man who had managed to stay one step ahead of the law for years. Nobody had ever been
able to bring him down. But I did. With every resource
at my disposal, I found the evidence I needed to connect him to the hired hit. And I made sure that I was the one who went to his office to
arrest him myself. By the time I arrived, he was already expecting me. He had
poisoned his right hand man because Starsky had survived the attack on his life
and the other man’s body was still sitting in a plush chair in the luxurious
office when I arrived to arrest Gunther. Gunther had a gun but he wasn’t used to getting his own hands dirty, he was used to
hiring someone else to do the job for him, so it wasn’t hard to overpower him.
I had to use every bit of restraint I could manage to keep from killing the man
with my bare hands. He had almost killed my partner, my best friend, and even
though Starsky was still alive, it would take him months to recover from his
injuries.
Starsky was in
a coma for almost a week. I was with him when he opened his eyes for the first
time after the attack and I had never felt such a
overwhelming surge of relief in my life. I wasn’t even
aware of the tears that were streaming down my face when I saw those sapphire
eyes staring at me. He was only awake for a few seconds before his eyes closed
again but somehow I knew in my heart that he was going to beat the odds this
time. He was going to live. In spite of the doctor’s dire predictions, in spite
of the massive damage he had suffered, he had survived. And
I swore that I would be by his side to make sure he recovered from the attack,
no matter how long it took. God had given us both a second chance and I
intended to make the most of it.
Starsky was in
the hospital for almost two months. He was heavily medicated most of the time
and didn’t remember the shooting or the first couple
of weeks in the hospital. But he was still alive and
that was the only thing that mattered to me. Captain Dobey agreed to put me on
indefinite leave to care for him until he was back on his feet. He’d lost a partner that he cared about almost as much as I
cared about Starsky and he knew how I felt. And even
though he didn’t come right out and say it, Starsky and I both knew how the
Captain felt about us too. We were all family and we were all grateful that
Starsky’s life had been spared.
AFTERMATH
When Starsky
was finally released from the hospital it was on the
condition that someone could stay with him for awhile and that someone was
going to be me. I had to be the one to nurse him back to health. I still blamed
myself because I couldn’t protect him from being hurt
in the first place. He was still so weak and so vulnerable. He couldn’t do much for himself at all and still needed almost
constant care, care I was only too willing to provide. He had beaten the odds
and survived even though the doctors had given him up for dead when he was admitted. He was their miracle patient and to me, he was
just a miracle. I still had my best friend and my partner by my side in spite
of all the odds against him.
He was still
heavily medicated. He had to take pills to regulate his blood
pressure, stool softeners, pills to keep his body from retaining fluids,
antibiotics, pills to help boost his immune system, pills to help with his
digestion, pills for his anxiety and panic attacks, pills to keep his lungs
clear, and some heavy duty pain pills for the terrible pain he was still in
from his injuries and the various surgeries to save his life.
He couldn’t get out of bed by himself, or walk any distance at
all. He couldn’t go to the bathroom without assistance
and I had to give him sponge baths since he couldn’t take a shower or a bath
until the stitches were all removed. Sometimes, he cried because the pain was
so bad and the only thing I could do was curl up on the bed beside him and hold
him to try and comfort him the best way I could. I
gave him massages to work out the cramps in his legs and to loosen the knots in
his muscles. I applied ointment to the healing scars to keep them from
tightening up too much and I did the best I could to encourage him to eat so he
could regain the weight he’d lost since the shooting.
Since he was
on a restricted diet, it became a challenge trying to fix food that would tempt
him to eat. He couldn’t have any of his favorite junk
foods and it became a real challenge to get him to eat enough to start to
regain both his weight and his strength.
Some days the
best I could hope for was to get him to drink the special milk shakes I made
for him or to eat a bowl of his favorite ice cream. Even then, far too often,
his body would reject the food I so patiently got down him and we’d have to start all over again.
His mother
came to stay for six weeks to help out but I was still
his primary care taker. But having her there did take
some of the pressure off me and left me a couple of hours a day free to do the
shopping and errands that needed to be done. Starsky still slept most of the
time so I tried to plan my other activities around the times I knew he would be
sleeping. Three times a day, I did range of motion exercises to keep his joints
flexible and to help rebuild his muscle tone. I hated that most of all because
I was forced to cause him more pain when I did the
exercises, each time moving the joint a little farther than the last time to
keep it loosened up. It was the hardest with his left hand and arm. He had very
little use of that arm because one of the bullets had done so much damage to
his left shoulder and since he was left handed, it was imperative that he
regain use of that arm and hand.
At night I
would lay awake beside him and listen as he struggled just to breath normally. The doctors still weren’t
sure if he would ever regain full use of his left lung or not. And regardless of how much lung capacity he did regain, he
would always be more susceptible to lung infections. Even a simple cold could
easily turn into life threatening pneumonia if he wasn’t
careful.
It was almost
two months before he could begin the more rigorous physical therapy that he
needed to regain his mobility and his stamina. It took that long for him to
regain enough strength and lung power to be able to
endure the more strenuous activity it would involve. Physical therapy began a
new torture for my resilient partner. He had to attend daily sessions for
almost six months, then they were cut back to twice a
week for another three months. The sessions left him exhausted and in terrible
pain. After a session, he would have to take a pain pill and then he would
sleep for the rest of the afternoon. But Starsky is
the most determined man I know and he fought with everything he had to give in
order to recover. It was a long slow process but he prevailed. Six months after
the shooting, he was able to care for himself again but I stuck around,
unwilling and unable to give up my caretaker role completely.
I watched as
he fought every step of the way to regain his strength, his stamina
and his independence. And I was right there by his
side every day, encouraging him and coaxing him, even bullying him when it
seemed like he couldn’t go on any more. I was there to help him through his
bouts of depression and self pity and to rejoice with
him with each new achievement. We became closer than ever during his recovery.
It was hard for me when I finally realized he didn’t
need me as much any more and I had to back off, for his sake and for my own.
In a few
weeks, he will go in front of the review board, almost a year after he was
shot, to see if they will clear him to go back to
active duty. I know that is what he wants but I’m
terrified to see him back out there, putting himself back in the line of fire
again. But either way, I will be there by his side no
matter what happens. If he is cleared to go back on the streets, I will be
there watching his back as usual. And if he can’t go
back on active duty, then neither will I. I will not work the streets with
another partner besides Starsky. He knows that. We have already talked about
it. Regardless of the outcome of the review board, he knows that I will always
be there beside him.
Captain Dobey
has already told us that if Starsky can’t return to
the streets, then he will contact a friend of his at the Academy to try to get
us jobs there as instructors. It is an option that we are both considering. It
was too close this time, I couldn’t go through something like this again and neither could Starsky. I gave up my apartment and
put my things in storage when I moved in with Starsky to care for him and we
have discussed finding a larger apartment or maybe a house together once the
review board makes their decision. I can’t stand the
thought of leaving him alone, our lives have become too closely entwined for
that. Since the day we first met, it’s been me and
thee and it will continue to be that way for the rest of our lives, no matter
what we end up doing. Maybe that has been our destiny all along. We’ve left our mark as policemen and found a enduring
friendship and bond that will continue for eternity. Maybe that’s
what god had in mind for both of us from the beginning. I believe it is.
THE END
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