============================
“Lay her i’ the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring.” - Act V, Scene I
Dave Starsky sat in the kitchen in Venice Place and listened in disbelief to the voice at the other end of the phone.
He had elected to stay here while Hutch went to the sentencing hearing for Richard Caldwell. He had a hunch how the thing would go, and he thought Hutch might appreciate a home-cooked meal when he returned from the courthouse. Especially if that meal kicked off with, at last, Aunt Rosie’s famous and fabulous wonton soup.
The soup was completed; he had sampled it and thought the top of his head would come off at the combination of scent and taste that enveloped his senses. He turned the heat down to a simmer, and was reverently covering the pot when Hutch’s phone had rung. For a moment, he ignored it...then glanced at his watch and lifted the receiver, thinking it could be Hutch himself, calling about plans for dinner.
“Hello? Hello?” the voice on the other end responded with confusion to his greeting. “I’m sorry...do I have the wrong number? I’m calling Ken Hutchinson.”
Starsky grimaced as he recognized the voice, and wished he could turn the clock back just five seconds. “Hello, Kimberly,” he said stiffly, trying his best to at least be polite. “Hutch isn’t here...wanna leave a message?”
“Who’s this?” Kimberly asked bluntly. “Is that Ken’s partner? I’m sorry...what’s your name again? David what?”
Starsky sighed. “Starsky,” he supplied. “Hutch should be back any minute now...want me to have him call you?” Say yes, he begged her silently. Don’t make me spend any more time on the phone with you than I have to.
“No, that’s not necessary,” she said formally. “Just tell him I know where our parents are.”
“What?” She had his full attention now.
“I know where Mother and Father have been,” she repeated, her voice now breezy and matter-of-fact. “Silly of me, really...I can’t believe I didn’t tell Ken that they had booked a two-month cruise to Europe, for their anniversary. They stopped the mail and the papers, and they were going with their neighbors, so I didn’t even hear from them before they left.”
Starsky said absolutely nothing.
“Tell Ken I’m sorry, won’t you, David?” Kimberly said in a tittering voice that fell like broken glass on Starsky’s ears. “I can’t believe I forgot where Mother and Father were...oh, well, _he’s_ always so busy, I’m sure he’ll understand how it could have slipped my mind.”
Starsky thought of the days his partner had spent worrying about where his parents were, and the guilt that had been stirred by the idea that they might have disappeared before he had reconciled his feelings for them. He remembered how this additional mystery had robbed Hutch of hours of sleep, sleep he couldn’t spare given the double load he’d been carrying at the time. And his temper boiled over as he realized that this infuriating woman on the other end of the phone could have spared her brother every bit of the pain he’d been through...if her tiny little mind had just expanded enough, for a single second, to include thoughts of someone besides herself.
He cleared his throat...and in a low, deadly voice, blistered the phone line and Kimberly Hutchinson-Munroe’s ears by telling her exactly what he thought of her.
Then, before she could muster the haughtiness to return the favor, he silently cradled the receiver.
And just in time, as he heard the rattle and scrape of the key in Hutch’s door.
“Not guilty by reason of insanity.” Hutch slammed the door behind him and threw his jacket in one direction and his tie in another. “What a bunch of shit.”
He crossed the living room in angry strides and smacked open his refrigerator, grabbing a beer from the interior and decapitating it with a vicious pop of the bottle opener. Taking a swig, he returned to the living room and sprawled into a chair, extending his legs before him and scowling fiercely. “Not guilty by reason of insanity,” he repeated, his tone dripping disgust. “So he goes back to a psychiatric hospital instead of the joint. I tell you, Starsk...sometimes I don’t think there’s any justice in this world.”
Starsky thought of his conversation with Kimberly and half-smiled...which he stifled immediately as Hutch looked over at him.
“I know, partner...but look at this way,” he said, trying to be reasonable. “He’s in a maximum security institution this time, not some private hospital...and he’ll probably be there longer than he would be in prison.”
“Yeah, well...still...” Hutch’s complaints trailed off; he was too tired to even argue. He rubbed his forehead as if he could erase the dull headache that had been there for most of the sentencing. Downing another swallow of the beer, he sighed wearily, and contemplated the sunlight that poured through his windows, the specks of dust dancing in it like a corps of tiny ballerinas.
Starsky knew that sigh, having heard it countless times from his own lips. There was nothing either of them could say at times like this: sometimes the system worked the way they thought it should and sometimes it didn’t. They grappled with that reality on a regular basis, and occasionally considered leaving the force for something where they had a little more control. But generally, after a few beers and a healthy bitch session, they concluded they were doing all they could to make things better.
At least two of their worries were now settled. IA had dropped all the charges against Hutch, to Starsky’s triumph and Dryden’s disgruntlement...and now, Hutch’s parents were apparently alive and well.
And tonight, there would be the ambrosia of wonton to hurry the process along.
Hutch abandoned his reverie and pushed himself out of his chair with another weary sigh, then moved around the room to retrieve his scattered clothing. “You ready?”
“Sure.” Starsky picked up his own jacket and shrugged into it as he crossed to the door. Reknotting his tie, Hutch joined him, then paused as he finally registered the scents filling the tiny apartment. Frowning, he sniffed at the air, then raised an accusing eyebrow at his partner.
“You’ve been cooking,” he declared.
“Yeah,” Starsky replied.
“What?” Hutch said warily.
“Surprise.” Starsky allowed himself only a somewhat saintly smile, then nudged the blond detective. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Aw, Starsk,” Hutch groaned, as he locked the door, replaced the key, and followed his partner down the stairs. “I’m in no mood...can’t you give me a hint? Like telling me exactly what you’ve cooked up?”
“Nope.”
Sighing resignedly, Hutch slid behind the wheel of the Ford, wondering if this day were ever going to improve.
They drove in silence for several moments, as Hutch consulted a written set of directions that Wayne had given him. Eventually, they reached the outskirts of the city, and Hutch steered the Ford through a gate surrounded by rolling hills and lush trees, and crowned with a sign reading, “Hillcrest Cemetery.” He took one of the gravel roads leading away from the main entrance, again checking the directions Wayne had provided, and eventually pulled the Ford to a stop.
Turning off the ignition, he gazed out the window. Without looking at his partner, he said quietly, “Give me a minute, huh?”
Starsky didn’t reply; he didn’t need to. He simply watched through the windshield as his partner moved between a row of stones to one whose polished whiteness stood out like a beacon among its older, weatherbeaten neighbors.
Hutch gazed down at the newly chiseled stone that marked the final resting place of Rosalind Berry. He felt the setting sun caress his face, thinking that this girl should still be alive and vibrant, regretting that he had been unable to stop Caldwell and Harrison in time to preserve her warmth and vital presence. Then, as usual, he battled his guilt by reminding himself that he hadn’t pulled the trigger...or tightened the wire...or turned on the shower and trapped her in its deadly flow.
It was a battle he fought constantly. And he knew it wore on him. Sometimes he handled it by staying away once a case was closed, by not acknowledging death, by avoiding funerals and memorial services.
At others, like this, he might wait for a while, then come to say his goodbyes in private.
He laid a single white rose on the gravestone, and murmured, almost inaudibly, “Sweets to the sweet...farewell.”
Then he turned and purposefully, without looking back, strode away from the grave and back to his car.
****************************
“All right, Starsky, what is this?”
Hutch eyed the pot on his stove with growing suspicion, as his partner shed his jacket and tie and kicked off his shoes.
Starsky ignored him, simply elbowed him aside as he entered the kitchen and placed himself in front of the pot.
“Sit,” he commanded, reaching to the shelves above the stove for two bowls, then pulling two spoons from the dish drainer.
Lowering his guard not a whit, Hutch sank down into a chair at his kitchen table and continued to watch his partner.
Starsky left the bowls and spoons on the counter while he drew a loaf of fresh French bread from a bag he’d left on the floor, and a cup of whipped butter from the refrigerator. Bringing these to the table with a bread knife and a cookie sheet, he settled himself into a chair and began to neatly slice the loaf.
“Starsk...” Hutch began impatiently.
“First things first, _Detective_ Hutchinson,” Starsky interrupted with a gesture of the knife, and a grin as they both acknowledged Hutch’s reinstatement to the force. “For your evening’s entertainment, I have a story entitled, ‘What I Did While Hutch Was at the Sentencing’...”
Alternately slicing the bread and slathering it with the butter, Starsky first assured his partner that his parents were safe, then regaled a relieved Hutch with the details of his conversation with Kimberly. Finishing, he licked an errant dab of butter from his finger and laid the loaf onto the cookie sheet with a satisfied smile. “So, in conclusion, your parents are fine,” he said, rising to put the bread into the oven. “Your sister, however, is now sportin’ a spare asshole.”
Hutch stared at his partner for several seconds, then threw back his head and gave in to a shout of laughter that he desperately needed.
Allowing his smile to turn smug, Starsky dug through Hutch’s kitchen drawers until he found a ladle, which he laid beside the bowls and spoons. Then he crossed his arms, leaned back against the counter, and waited patiently for Hutch to compose himself.
Finally, clearing mirthful moisture from his eyes, Hutch returned his attention to the matter at hand. “All right, Starsk, enough,” he ordered, but his demeanor was colored more with teasing and affection than annoyance. “What’s the big mystery?”
Soberly, almost ritualistically, Starsky lifted the cover from the pot; his face assumed a rapturous expression as steam billowed up to bathe him in the intoxicating aroma.
Hutch grew slightly less cranky as the scent reached him. His stomach began to growl. “What is that?” he asked again.
“This,” Starsky said, ladling a healthy serving into a bowl and setting it before his partner, “is my aunt Rosie’s famous, award-winning...”
“Wonton soup,” Hutch finished for him, looking down at his bowl in amazement. “But...how did you...?”
“Charm and technique,” Starsky said mysteriously, preparing his own bowl and carrying it to the table.
Hutch raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You’ve been trying that for years, and it’s never worked,” he pointed out. “What’d you do, chloroform her?”
“All right, all right,” Starsky grumbled. “I told her it was for you, and she caved.” He snapped out a paper napkin as if it were made of finest linen, and let it waft across his partner’s lap, then tucked a second under his own chin.
Hutch looked from Starsky to the bowl, then back to Starsky. “For me...” he echoed, uncomprehending.
“Yeah...you wearin’ yourself out over this thing...workin’ double shifts, learnin’ lines, and worryin’ about your parents too,” Starsky said breezily. “She couldn’t give it up fast enough...she’s a total sucker for ya, Blintz.”
Hutch half-grinned, hearing the message behind the offhand words. “Thanks, partner.”
“Any time.” Starsky gave back a lopsided grin, then scooped up a spoonful of the fragrant soup, raising it as if in toast to his partner. “Now, stop asking questions...and eat.”
And they did.
Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting
That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay
Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly -
And praised be rashness for it; let us know,
Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will -
That is
most certain.” - Act V, Scene II