"Captain Dobey's office." There was a long silence, then the captain tried again, "Hello?"
Starsky cleared his throat, then carefully said, "...Hey, Cap."
For two minutes he listened to the captain breathing on the other end of the line. Measured breaths that spoke volumes.
"Most people would have you committed, Starsky." Dobey said finally.
"Yeah, I know, Cap." Starsky swallowed, then carefully added, "If you need a way to make it look good, I've had a typed and signed resignation in my desk for the past three years. You just have to date it."
"I need to know why you left your partner in the hospital and disappeared into thin air for 9 days." Dobey barked, struggling to keep his voice down, while still seething.
"I found one of the bodies. I think it's Horvitz, but the body is in a guard's uniform. I took a roll of pictures and I put up a stake fence around the body but...animals have already been at it."
"Does anybody know you're there?"
Starsky shook his head. "No. I've been...camping."
"Huh!" Dobey said, then took a deep breath that echoed through the phone.
"How's Hutch?"
"I should make you come see for yourself after what you've put us through." Dobey said.
Starsky pressed his lips together, then felt his cheeks start to burn, and couldn't help the grin as he pointedly said, "Us?"
"No more complications. He's been awake more and more each day. And mad."
Starsky's grin widened, stretching against 9 days of sun and wind damage. "He's really mad, huh?"
"He saw the keys to that Torino of yours and wanted to know what you'd done with his car?"
"Tell him it's safe and sound. I never touched it." Starsky beamed.
"You need to tell him. You need to get back here."
"I do that, those other bodies could be completely gone by the time IA is finished wringing my neck."
"And what are a couple of photos snapped with a Brownie gonna prove?"
"It's a Kodak. And maybe nothin', not with only one body. Captain, Ackabee had to cover his tracks and claim a prison break, because these deaths were leaked to the press. That doesn't mean they were the first men to die, just the first that anybody missed."
"Who dropped the dime?"
"That's the point, I don't know. Even Orlando didn't know. I can't know until I find the rest of the bodies and get them identified."
Dobey was quiet for a few minutes, then took in a deep breath. "We're going to make a deal, David. Between you and me. And then this is never going to happen again."
Starsky suddenly felt like he was 8-years-old, standing in the shadow of his father, knowing he'd done wrong, fearing the punishment, yet fearing his father's abandonment all the more.
"Ok." He said finally.
"I expect you in my office by 8pm tomorrow evening. Between now and then I don't care what you do as long as you meet with the sheriff in Tehachapi and report the location of the body."
"Ok."
"When you get here, we're going take a look at that resignation, and then we're gonna burn it."
Starsky smiled, the expression tight in a face that hadn't moved much in over a week. "Okay." He said again.
"Then you are going to sit in that hospital, every waking hour that you are not on duty, until your partner is able to walk out on his own."
"They don't let you walk out, Cap, they make you ride in a-"
"Starsky!"
"I'm sorry, Cap, I'm sorry." Starsky swallowed the smile and the strange sense of relief and said, "I am sorry, Cap. I don't-"
"You're not the only one who goes crazy when his partner's life is at stake."
"Hutch wouldn'ta done this."
"Don't count on it. Eight pm, tomorrow."
"Night, Captain."
Starsky set the phone in the cradle and took a deep breath of chilly mountain air. He looked to the sky, surprised to see clouds covering the stars that had kept him company most of the night. The police station was behind him but it was a cinch that in a town of that size there wouldn't be anyone on duty until morning.
He was climbing into the station wagon, considering where he would sleep for the night when the first fat snowflake landed on the windshield. More followed rapidly. Cold, wet, clumps of snowflakes that would cover the mountain roads, discourage local police from being willing to go on wild goose chases and obscure crime scenes.
Starsky sat and watched the street go from brown to white in a matter of minutes. Then his stomach rumbled painfully and he knew he had to make an effort to get back to the cabin, a warm fire, and hot food. He couldn't rely on the hospitality of the natives. With a prison so close to the town, no citizen of Tehachapi was going to take in a stranger. He turned on the wipers to clear the front windshield, but could do nothing about the back. The tires held out against the snow and the roads cleared a little as he started to climb, protected by tree cover.
He was creeping up the mountain road, squinting at each turn off, hoping he would instinctively recognize the one for the cabin, but the snow had already begun to alter the appearance of landmarks. The sight of the crooked tree, the broken mailbox and the gate further down the road came as a relief. Living in the east might have kept snow from being a novelty, but he'd never really driven in it.
Instead of opening the gate and driving through he collected his supplies from the backseat, planning to hike to the cabin. He'd gone twenty feet down the cabin road, past the gate when he heard another car engine and turned to see a jeep, with its lights out, pull in behind the station wagon.
Starsky backtracked into the woods, breathing hard, watching four men climb out of the jeep, each with rifles.
They went to the station wagon, the lead man smashing the front window to get at the locks, before they went through the front and back of the car efficiently stripping it of any identification. Then they doused the seats with accelerant and set the car on fire.
Starsky started running the moment the gallon jugs of gasoline left the jeep. He covered the ground to the cabin, then oriented from there and took off for the lean-to, guided by the blazes and the moonlight reflecting off the snow. Already 2 inches had covered the ground, hiding tree falls and rocks. Halfway to the lean-to Starsky's foot went into a hole, his momentum wedged his leg between the weight of two giant trunks and his knee twisted before he could stop his forward momentum.
Something popped and pain flared up his leg, driving a shout out of him that he couldn't stop.
The pain overwhelmed everything for a moment, making him forget his fear, forget the body, forget the prison, his promise to Dobey. Starsky put both palms down against the two tree trunks, quaking as he took his weight onto his hands. He brought his left foot up and pushed himself back out of the vice grip and up, twisting at the waist until he could perch on one of the trunks. There was an odd bump at his right knee, a weird twist to the leg that told him he'd have to hurt a whole lot more before he could hope to walk.
The woods behind him were empty, void of voices or bodies, but all it would take was one enterprising man among them to notice the blazes and follow the obvious trail he'd left.
They hadn't hesitated before setting the car on fire. Not for a moment. Starsky had no doubt they would make his death swift and efficient if that was any part of their plan.
Carefully he lowered himself to the ground on the other side of the two trunks, not wanting to do what he had to do.
"Stupid, Starsky. Ya dummy. H-hutch hears about this he's gonna laugh til his teeth hurt. God…"
Starsky forced air in and out of his lungs, building up what courage he could before he told himself to count to three. He tried to twist his leg back into place on 2, but didn't have the strength or the leverage. The pain left him shaking, soaking with sweat and ready to pass out.
He looked behind him, over the mound of snow that covered the tree trunk, at the hole that had caused the problem. It would take every muscle in his body to put his knee back. The tight space between the tree branches that had caused the injury, would be his last hope of fixing it before he passed out.
Moving by inches Starsky hoisted himself back onto the trunk, turning carefully and slipping his wounded leg into the crag. Forcing it into the tightest part of the crag would hurt, so would twisting his whole body until the joint snapped back into place.
"Do it all at one time." Starsky told himself, glancing up the mountainside again. He ripped his hat off, stuffed it into his mouth, then spared himself the count and did it. His voice cracked when he screamed into the cloth of the hat. Then he couldn't breathe and had to spit it out.
He let himself pant, huge puffs of condensing air competing with the snowflakes falling in front of him. Tears that the pain had produced coated his face, giving the snowflakes someplace to rest. Nausea had hit him, threatening to spill still-uneaten meals on the tree trunk, but he stayed rooted long enough to avoid it.
When he could, Starsky freed himself from the trunks in a move that was now familiar to him, sank down on the opposite side, and noticed the dry, snow-free space under the trunks that was just big enough for a man to lie in.
For a few minutes he sat in the middle of a forest, snow collecting on his head while he considered his options.
"Starsky…" He told himself between breaths. "This is the first time, and the last time that you are sleeping under a tree trunk on the side of a mountain."
No one responded. The woods were quiet enough that he could hear the snowflakes hitting the ground.
"You should also," Starsky said, digging through his pack for the two blankets at the bottom. "...stop talking to yourself."
He wrapped both blankets around his shoulders and secured his hat on his head before he slowly crawled under the trunks. He dragged his bag in with him, not sure if the cold he didn't yet feel would overwhelm the raw ache in his knee at any point.
Either the men that had burned the car hadn't seen him, or had chosen against following him in the snow. He lay awake for an hour undisturbed until sleep claimed him.
He woke at dawn, terrified.
The blankets were blissfully warm, the snow and the proximity of the trees enough of a shelter to keep his body heat in. The snow was deep enough that only a small window remained out which he could see the dim light of the sun. The woods around him were quiet, yet he couldn't slow his heart rate.
Starsky closed his eyes tight and forced air through clenched teeth, trying to rationally calm himself. He reminded himself of the blazes, the lean-to and the rifle hidden there, the map in his bag, the compass. All the things that would get him out of the woods. That would get him home. As the terror subsided he began to feel the cold, the dull ache in his knee, a headache waiting to bloom behind his eyes and the hunger.
He drew a deep breath in through his nose, then blinked at the pervasive smell that greeted him. Wood smoke. Wood smoke meant people, yet Starsky couldn't hear anything.
Moving hurt, but he managed to do it quietly and peered through the round hole the snowfall had left him. It was still falling beyond his 'cave', spiraling in tiny flakes that seemed insignificant compared to hours before. He couldn't see the lean-to but the blazes on the trees leading to it were painfully obvious.
He had no way of knowing where the smoke was coming from and began to feel the panic rising, when a gust of wind blew through the veil of snow, showing him the smoke's origin. Up the mountain. The cabin.
Starsky settled back into his shelter for a moment and looked at the balloon that had swollen overnight, where his right knee used to be. Still hiding in his cave he opened a can of peaches and ate his way through it, accompanying the meal with two slices of bread, and some jerky. He would have compared it to any caviar, lobster or sirloin Hutch might have put in front of him, and still considered it the best meal he'd eaten.
He cleaned the peach can out with snow and tucked it back into his bag, folded one of the blankets into the bag, and kept the other over his shoulders.
Getting out of the snow 'cave' meant plunging his bare hands into the frozen white stuff without gloves, but then he hadn't been expecting a snowstorm. The snow was wet enough to pack and before long he had a solid sill at the bottom of the opening that made the cave feel a little more permanent, in case he needed it again. Standing was a complicated process, accomplished in stages, with resting periods, but when he did finally emerge the world around him was covered in white, and still devoid of people.
Starsky searched the ground and the sky carefully before he stepped out into the open. His first step was a doozy, the snow deep, wet and heavy. The combination of the snow, the unseen pitfalls and the state of his knee made it almost impossible to move. The biggest problem was the drag of the snow on his right boot whenever he tried to take a step forward. Any pressure on the swollen joint meant pain that after a few steps exhausted him.
He went forward all the same, step by tiring step, until he reached the lean-to. The snow had collapsed part of the roof, knocking his elevated supplies to the ground and burying the rifle and the camera. It took an hour to clear out the snow, his hands blood red from the cold. He pressed them into his armpits and rocked back and forth on the floor of the lean-to until the burning at his fingertips eased, and he could feel the rest of his hands as well.
"Oh what a mess..."
Maybe the men had been locals, territorial about their cabin and given to trouble making. The jeep could have followed him up without Starsky knowing. The back window of the station wagon had been completely covered with snow, and the jeep's lights out, when it pulled into the drive. It was their unflinching intent that had Starsky convinced, the night before, that they were connected with the prison. They had done it before, and they'd looked sober...almost professional...or had that been the fear rewriting the scene?
"Can't spend another night out here." He told himself, closing his eyes as the first rays of sunlight reached him. With the sky clear, at that elevation, the mountain would warm up fast. Maybe the snow would melt. Maybe his knee would loosen up, hurt a little less without so much dragging on it. Maybe Santa would fly by in his sleigh and offer him a ride.
But no, it was March. Santa was vacationing in Bora Bora.
"That takes care of one of the maybes."
Once the sun was high enough to warm the lean-to a little, Starsky unbundled himself and pulled out the map, figuring the shortest route to a road. On two good legs, with the snow as deep as it was, it would take him four hours to get out. He multiplied the number by two, then reminded himself about the prison, its proximity to the town, and the untrusting nature of the locals.
He would be on his feet for a long time.