CHAPTER 21
===================================================
“A king of shreds and patches! -
Save me and hover o’er me with your wings.” - Act III, Scene IV
It wasn’t until late that night that the medical staff finally released an exhausted Hutch to his partner’s care. None of the sword wounds were particularly serious, though the gash on his arm and the first one on his neck both required several stitches. The only other residual effects of his encounter with Caldwell were a pounding headache...and a sneaking suspicion that there was something Starsky was not telling him.
As they left the hospital and started toward the waiting Torino, Hutch eyed his partner warily, becoming more and more certain that he was right. As soon as they had gotten a fair distance from the hospital, he stopped. Starsky continued on for several steps, then, noticing Hutch was no longer at his side, also stopped and twisted around, to meet Hutch’s demanding gaze.
“What?”
“You tell me.”
Starsky sighed. “Not here, huh? Let’s at least get to the car.”
Hutch shrugged, then strode the last several yards to the Torino. Then, leaning on the hood with a set jaw and a stubborn expression, he folded his arms and fixed Starsky with expectant eyes.
“Okay, partner,” he ordered firmly. “Spill it.”
Starsky thought about denying anything was wrong, but decided this would just postpone the inevitable. “There’s no easy way to say this, buddy,” he began gently. “When I got to the theatre, I found Roz dead, in your dressing room.”
The glare left Hutch’s eyes as pain washed over his face. “Oh, damn,” he groaned, dropping his folded arms. “Damn,” he repeated, so quietly as to almost be a whisper, thumping his fist softly against the car’s hood. “He did it, didn’t he? Caldwell.”
“Sort of,” Starsky hedged. Hutch’s eyes shot back up to his.
“‘Sort of’?” he echoed irritably. “What the hell does that mean?”
Starsky reminded himself that Hutch was tired, injured, and had a helluva headache, and spoke in as even a tone as he could muster. “We found Jim Harrison’s body in the combat room, too.”
“Jim?” Hutch echoed again. He slumped against the car once more, suddenly feeling the aftereffects of the long and extremely stressful day, and shook his head as the parking lot swam and tilted before his eyes.
“Hey.” Starsky was at his side in a second. “Sorry, pal...shouldn’t’ve piled all that on you at once. C’mon, let’s get in the car. I’ll tell ya the rest on the way back to your place.”
Minutes later, they were on their way to Venice Place. Hutch’s vision had cleared, though he was acutely aware that he was still drained and not thinking as clearly as he would have liked. He pressed a hand unobtrusively to his head and sighed silently.
Starsky noted the gesture, but respected his friend’s wish to have it ignored.
“How?” Hutch said at length, speaking to scenery outside the window.
“Drowned.”
“Figures.”
“Looks like she was held under the shower until her lungs just filled up. But he got a little careless this time...from the water in the hallway and in your dressing room, it’s pretty clear she was killed elsewhere and then dumped in your shower.”
“Then what?”
“Near as we can figure, you were next,” Starsky went on. “And Harrison...Caldwell strangled him with what looks like piano wire.”
“Jesus,” Hutch murmured. “That guy must be strong as an ox.”
“He is,” Starsky agreed. “Scooped you up off the floor like a baby so he could use you as a shield...that’s how he got away.”
Hutch half-smiled grimly. “Yeah, that part I remember.”
For several moments, both men were silent, their faces pensive in the intermittent flashes of the streetlights overhead. Hutch cupped his chin on his hand, elbow propped up on the Torino’s door, and ran the facts Starsky had given him back through his mind.
“So Caldwell puts me out,” he recounted. “Then while I’m unconscious, he strangles Harrison and dumps the body. Then he does the duel routine, only he’s stacked the deck with his little poisoned point...” He paused, and his frown deepened. “Something doesn’t fit, Starsk.”
Starsky remained silent, waiting to see if his partner would come to the same conclusion he had.
“Killing Roz and me...that’s in keeping with the script. But Horatio is one of the few who’s left standing at the end of the show.”
Starsky inclined his head. “Right. That’s what I was thinkin’ too.”
Hutch’s eyes narrowed, flicking back and forth as he rearranged the puzzle pieces in his brain. “Jim had to be Caldwell’s insider,” he concluded after a few moments. “Yeah, that’s gotta be it...he must’ve been the one who killed Roz and knocked me out...then Caldwell killed him.”
“No way to know, not yet,” Starsky said. “But that’s where I got to, too.”
“And Caldwell’s long gone, right? Get a description of the car, license plate, anything?”
Starsky shook his head. “By the time I got there, he’d split.”
“Damn.” Hutch tapped the window lightly with a white-knuckled fist. “We had him. And he slipped through our fingers.”
“Sorry, pal,” Starsky said without a trace of remorse. “But I figured even if I got him with the first shot, your neck was goin’ first.”
“Yeah,” Hutch admitted, gazing out the window, remembering that helpless feeling he’d had in the combat room, limbs unresponsive and that sword poised at his throat. “Yeah...thanks, partner.”
“Anytime.” Starsky one-handed the car around a final turn, then pulled the Torino in front of Hutch’s apartment building. Hutch’s Ford was already there, thanks to Lowell Abbott’s improvised vehicle delivery service. Two other cars were parked in front of the Ford; Hutch recognized one as Dobey’s, and the other looked vaguely familiar too.
“What’s goin’ on?” he asked over the roof, as both men climbed out of the car and slammed the heavy doors shut.
“Powwow,” Starsky said succinctly.
“What?”
“Well,” Starsky said, holding the carved wooden door open so Hutch could precede him up the steps, “Dobey wanted a strategy meeting with Drake, and he figured you wouldn’t sit still for bein’ left out. So we decided to meet at your place, so you could crash when you needed to.”
“I’m fine,” Hutch insisted, but his declaration would have been more effective if he hadn’t stumbled up the last few steps and had to catch himself on the handrail. Behind his back, Starsky rolled his eyes, knowing there was no point in arguing but also planning to keep the meeting as brief as possible.
Dobey and Drake were waiting inside when Hutch unlocked the door. Returning the key to its usual place above the doorjamb, Hutch stepped aside so Starsky could enter, then closed the door. Crossing to his bedroom, he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it on the bed, then went around to the kitchen.
“Anybody want a beer?” he called as he knocked open his refrigerator and grabbed one for himself. “Coffee? Tea?”
Drake and Dobey requested coffee, while Starsky non-too-subtly took the bottle from his partner’s hand. Hutch started to protest, but quickly realized he’d have a better chance of staying awake if he opted for caffeine over alcohol. He relinquished the bottle, and started a pot of coffee on the stove.
Beverage service completed, the four men arrayed themselves on Hutch’s mismatched furniture and contemplated the facts they had before them.
“We know Caldwell’s in the city, but where?” Dobey opened the discussion. “Any ideas, Wayne? Any thoughts about what his stomping grounds were when he was here?”
“None,” Drake said ruefully. “He and we didn’t exactly run in the same circle.”
“The history Starsky ran down didn’t look too great,” Hutch pointed out, sprawled across his couch with an afghan propped behind his head. “He couldn’t find a job anywhere back on the East Coast...and he disappeared several times during the last ten years into various mental institutions around the country.”
“So the odds are he was staying at some flophouse that had cheap weekly rates,” Starsky added. “The only question is which one?”
“Which brings us right back where we started,” Dobey grumbled. “How do we find him?”
“Or how does he find us,” Drake murmured.
The other three paused to examine him curiously.
“What’re you talkin’ about, Wayne?” Hutch asked.
“Well, he’s shown himself to have a penchant for the dramatic,” Drake pointed out. “And he’s obviously quite mad, or he wouldn’t have embarked on this to begin with...or gone to all the trouble to kill everyone according to the plot of the play. So perhaps, there’s a way to entice him back into the theatre for one last...performance.”
Hutch sat up, setting his coffee cup on the floor and ignoring the pain that flashed through his head at the movement. “You may have something there, Wayne,” he said. “In the play, Hamlet tricks Claudius through the dumb show...maybe that’s something we can use...”
“Draw him out,” Starsky agreed, picking up the beat with that rhythm Drake had noticed before between the two detectives. “Show him the company is still kickin’...maybe goad him into taking it up a notch.”
“Right.”
“What about a benefit?” Starsky said to Drake. “A memorial kind of thing, in honor of the cast members who were killed. Maybe that way you wouldn’t hafta do the whole thing.”
“An excellent idea,” Drake exclaimed. “We could put together selected scenes with the actors who are still surviving...Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the players, and Hamlet, of course...if you’re up for it, Ken.”
Without hesitation, Hutch nodded. He was not about to let this go down without him, not after Caldwell had murdered all these people and tried to frame him for it.
“I don’t like it,” Dobey growled. “Hutchinson, you damn near lost the last fight with this guy...you sure you wanna take him on again?”
“I have to, Captain,” Hutch said softly. “If for no other reason, than for Roz.” He got to his feet, wobbling only slightly (or so he thought) and retrieved the script from his jacket pocket. “Let’s take a look through here and see what scenes might work.”
They worked for another hour, sketching out a rough schedule of scenes for the benefit performance. Then Hutch brewed a second pot of coffee, and they began lobbing ideas back and forth for how Caldwell could be detected and detained.
“You really think he’ll show himself when the king is murdered onstage?” Dobey said skeptically.
“Nope,” Hutch admitted, smothering a yawn behind his coffee cup. “But it’s the best chance we’ve got.”
Starsky noticed that the hand holding the cup was starting to tremble, and Hutch’s eyes were taking on that glazed look again. Swinging to his feet, he strode casually over to the couch and removed the cup from his partner’s hand. “Time for us to clear out,” he declared. “I think Blondie here needs some beauty sleep.”
Agreeing, Dobey and Drake rose to their feet and started toward the door.
“Starsk, I’m fine,” Hutch protested.
“Not from where I’m sittin’,” Starsky said calmly.
“We still have to figure out how to smoke this guy out...”
“Tomorrow,” Starsky ordered. “Say g’night, Hutch. We’ll let ourselves out.”
“What time?” Hutch insisted, getting to his feet.
“Eight,” Dobey said firmly. “Get some sleep, Hutchinson. You look lousy.”
“Could’ve sworn I was an adult when I got up this morning,” Hutch complained, but he followed the others to the door. He had to admit, he was tired, and he gave Starsky only a perfunctory glare as the dark-haired detective passed him. In the doorway, Starsky paused, turned back to his friend with a beatific smile, and patted him on the cheek.
“Sleep tight, Blintz,” he said sweetly. “See ya in the morning.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hutch closed the door in his face and started to walk away, then turned back as Starsky opened it and leaned back inside.
In his hand was the key that typically rested on the upper jamb.
“Lock it...and keep this inside for tonight, will ya?” he ordered, and this time his face was serious. “That nut’s still runnin’ around, and we know he’s not too fond of you.”
“Yes, mother,” Hutch sighed. He shoved his partner out, locked the door, and tossed the key onto his desk. Dousing the lamps and stripping along the way, he grabbed a beer from the kitchen and went to his bedroom. Not bothering to turn on the lights, he set the beer on his nightstand and slid under the covers, sighing slightly as his weary body and throbbing head sank into the soft mattress and welcoming pillows.
Before he had finished three sips, he was sound asleep.
Outside on the street, Starsky watched and waited. Only after he saw the lights go out, did he turn the key in the Torino’s ignition, and pull away into the night.