Stalker
by TLR
Plot: Starsky is being stalked by an admirer who won't give up.
:::::::::::::::::::::::
Hutch's point of view:
The unease starts as a whisper in the back of my mind, a nagging that won't go away. Starsky's been distracted lately, quieter, eyes darting to shadows that don't hold threats—at least, none that I can see.
"What's going on, Starsk? Talk to me."
I think someone's watching him, but in his typical Starsky fashion, he says I'm paranoid and shrugs it off with a joke. I don't laugh along, thanks to Diane Harmon, the nurse whose love for me ended on the blade of a her knife. My worry gathers like wool.
The morning that Starsky doesn't show up at my Venice Place apartment to pick me up for work, the whisper turns into an inward groan of worry. It's not like him. I call his house, once, twice, three times—no answer. My gut twists; something's wrong.
I grab my jacket and head for his place. The Torino is here.
Please be here. Please be home.
The door's unlocked, a silent invitation to the mystery inside.
The place is a mess, a clear struggle, but it's the absence that hits hardest—no Starsky. My heart thunders, panic rising within me. Someone took him. Fear for my partner eclipses everything else.
I go to the squad room and search around his desk, finding obsessive notes he's stuck in his desk drawer where no one could see, even me unless I looked, like I'm doing right now: "I love you", "I can't live without you", "We must be together forever", the silent phone calls at the squad room desk when he answers but no one speaks, it all clicks together now.
It's more than an admirer, it's a stalker.
Why didn't he tell me? Was he waiting for more evidence? It wasn't like him to keep me out of the loop, out of his life, especially when potential danger was involved. Was my life somehow in jeopardy if he said anything? That's the only explanation at the time I could come up with for why he would withhold this.
I take the notes to the lab to be analyzed.
"Has he been seeing anyone recently?" the captain asks me in his office.
"Not really. It hasn't been that long since Terry..."
I let the sentence hang. Dobey nods. He understands, though he has to ask.
Terry was my partner's fiance until a madman named George Prudholm cut her down with a bullet.
"Keep looking for him, Hutchinson," he tells me, but he doesn't have to. I'm already out the door.
::
The search is frantic, desperate, leading me down dark alleys of the city and of the mind. Huggy hasn't heard anything. Nobody knows anything. Until Sweet Alice, our beautiful southern lady of the night, waves me down in front of her place and leans her blonde head in through my driver's side window.
"Not looking good, Handsome Hutch," she tells me with a sad smile. "I hear whispers of a man named Carter, a lost soul clinging to a love cut short."
Sweet Alice is a romantic, but I don't have time for poetic phrasing.
"Honey," I say softly squeezing her hand as I try to keep tears from my eyes. "You're going to have to break that down for me."
"Carter was a street poet, a singer of love songs with a guitar, played for the people and places around here. He was happy once, madly in love with another guy named Stevie, even though both families were against them. Except, their romance was cut short when Stevie was high on acid and stepped off the roof of a building. Carter was never the same after that. Starsk is dark and handsome like Stevie. I think...Carter thinks Starsky is Stevie, if you get my drift..."
"I do now," I say as I kiss her hand. "I need Carter's full name, last known address, places he hangs out the most, and acquaintances."
::
The notes take on a darker meaning. The lab doesn't have to tell me that the thread of a suicide pact runs through them.
It looks like Carter is caught up in a Romeo and Romeo scenario.
::
As twilight bleeds into darkness, I find Carter's upstairs apartment, which is over a closed and condemned diner on a rundown street.
Faint light glows in the upper window, maybe candles, maybe a small lamp.
I call backup but can't wait for them. I climb up the outside steps that lead up to the door of the apartment.
What would I find? A macabre Romeo scene with one or both of them dead?
I draw my gun and slowly turn the doorknob, finding the door unlocked, and slowly push it open.
Carter seems to be waiting for me, sitting on the floor against his kitchen sink, my partner sprawled back against Carter's chest as if resting there. One of Carter's arms is locked around my partner's throat, ready to choke him out if he needs to.
Starsk, however, looks too drugged to put up much of a fight. Both of his arms lie heavy on the floor. Carter has the upper hand. He has a gun to Starsky's head. The place is cluttered with smelly garbage and broken furniture. A large sluggish rat crawls across my partner's thigh. Starsky never notices.
I hate that my voice comes out as a weak plea.
"Starsk?"
It was instinct. Maybe I should've kept my mouth shut.
"Not Starsk," Carter says looking at me with pain and derangement in his eyes. "Stevie."
Some part of Starsky hears my voice, sees me through his glazed eyes, even through the drug. His hands move slightly as if to reach for me, but Carter clenches his arm tight around Starsky's throat, making him whimper in pain, and Starsky is still again, struggling to breathe past the constriction and losing consciousness.
"Poison," Carter says, then murmurs to Starsky. "Don't worry, Stevie. It'll be over soon."
My voice is amazingly calm as I say, "You're going to choke him," while my heart slams in my chest. "Please give me the gun. I'll put mine down if you put yours down. Let go of him. Let me call an ambulance for both of you. You need help, Carter. Not this."
Carter looks at me with gone eyes. "Death is our only escape. The poison is our final act of love."
"Yours," I say keeping my voice as quiet as his. "Not his. His name is Starsky. Not Stevie. And if you kill him, you're looking at-"
"We're already dead. We're already in heaven."
And then it happens. The gun drops from Carter's hand and he slumps sideways, dead as the poison claims him.
I holster my gun and jump forward to grab Starsky under the arms, hauling him to his feet so I can get him out of there. Wrapping his arm around my neck, I move him down the outside steps and to my car.
"You're safe," I pant as I get him into the front seat and drive us toward the ER. "Just keep breathing. Can you hear me Hm? Can you answer me?"
He doesn't. I just drive faster, keeping my arm around him, as if our physical closeness is enough to keep him alive until we get there; and maybe it is.
::
En route, I contact Dobey by radio, explain what went down, and tell him to have backup look for drugs or poison in Carter's apartment and bring it to Memorial Hospital.
Once through the ER doors, I help lower Starsk to a gurney. He's pale and still, but beneath my fingers, his pulse thrums, weak but present. Relief, sharp and sweet, pierces the fog of fear. There's hope. But is there time?
I help wheel him down the short hall, the hospital's fluorescent lights glaring after the gloom of Carter's rathole, but I welcome them—a sign of help and sanity.
I tell them to check his records for Professor Jennings' poisoning a few years earlier. Another madman who tried to end one of us, if not both.
Starsky's rushed into treatment, doctors swarming, a flurry of activity that I don't dare disrupt. They draw blood, run tests, give him oxygen. They're fighting for him, and so am I, the only way I can—waiting, praying, hoping against hope.
::
Hours stretch too slowly. I'm a statue in the waiting room, each tick of the clock both a second and a lifetime.
When Dr. Emily Meade finally enters, she offers a positive smile. "He's stable," she says, and those words are a lifeline. "The poison won't leave any permanent damage. He's going to be okay."
Okay.
The word is as good as a promise, if not a guarantee. I'm at his bedside the moment they allow me in, watching over him as he fights his way back.
I see bruises around his throat. I could kill Carter if he weren't already dead. Starsky's eyes slowly open, confusion giving way to recognition, and then, a weak smile.
"Hutch?"
"Right here, Starsk," I say, voice thick with emotions running through me: Relief, gratitude, love—they blend into a feeling so big it defies description. "You made it back."
Starsky tries to laugh, but it turns into a cough. "Yeah," he rasps. "Guess I'm not cut out for tragic romances."
The joke is feeble, but it's so perfectly Starsky that I laugh instead of cry.
"Hey," I ask gently, "why didn't you tell me about the notes?"
He looks reluctant to answer at first, then comes clean with, "There were other notes, that I tossed. 'Tell anyone, and they pay'. I couldn't put you at risk, Hutch."
I nod. I understand. Even though if he'd told me, I'm certain we could have made short work of this Carter guy.
"Just glad to have you back, Starsk."
the end