Work Text:
Breakout Weekend
by TLR
Plot: An escaped inmate is on the loose.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Prologue
Bruce Fallon was thirty-three, wore his correctional officer’s uniform proudly, and had spent the last six months looking at Melinda like she was something he could one day own if he just waited long enough or made the right move.
Inmate Melinda Rogers learned long ago how manipulation worked. Sadly, from her own childhood.
That was how she got out.
By Friday night, he had finally said yes, but to a much bigger request than a quickie in the janitor's closet.
The back seat of his sedan smelled like starch and bleach from the prison laundry bags piled over her. Melinda lay curled beneath them with her cheek pressed against rough fabric and counted the turns he made out of the lot. Her heart beat so hard it hurt. Not because she loved him. She didn’t. But because bars and walls were behind her now, and each mile behind her meant one more mile of freedom in front of her.
Bruce kept murmuring out loud as he drove, about the stolen money she promised to split with him once she dug it up from her granpa's back yard, and the places they’d go and fun things they'd do together.
Melinda shut her eyes and let him talk.
When he pulled into a filling station outside Stockton and got out to pump gas, she pushed the laundry aside, changed fast from inmate garb into the jeans and T-shirt he'd smuggled into her cell, and eased the back door open.
The cold night air hit her face, but she was too busy being panicked to enjoy it.
Bruce was around the other side of the car at the pump.
She ran.
By the time he saw her, she was already cutting behind the garage and into the dark streets beyond the station lights, one hand clamped over her mouth to hold in the laughter and fear and everything else.
Bruce shouted after her, but Melinda never looked back.
::
Hutch didn't mean to be out so late.
He was only going down the block for coconut milk, a jar of wheat germ, some fruit, and a newspaper. He’d worked late, skipped dinner, and was walking back toward Venice Place with a paper sack under one arm when someone ran into him full force coming around the corner.
The bag fell. The milk hit the sidewalk and split.
“Oh,” a woman gasped. “Oh God, I’m sorry.”
Hutch bent automatically to steady her before she fell. She was slim, dark-haired, maybe late twenties, and shivering hard. Her T-shirt had a split at the shoulder seam, her hair loose and wind-whipped.
“Easy,” Hutch said. “You okay?”
She nodded yes, then shook her head no.
“I don't know, I’m sorry.” She panted now. “I didn’t mean to run into you. I just... I’m trying to get away.”
Hutch glanced down the empty street. “From who?”
Her eyes flicked beyond him, then back to him. She hugged herself together. “My boyfriend,” she lied. “Rick. He hits me.”
“What’s your name?”
She hesitated. “Naomi.”
“Naomi,” Hutch said carefully as he looked around again, then looked at her more closely for injuries, “do you need a hospital?”
“No hospital or police. Please.”
“All right. No police right now. But full disclosure, I'm a cop.”
Melinda hid her reaction, thinking this could be her victory or her downfall.
Hutch bent to retrieve the newspaper and what was left of the groceries.
“I live right there,” he said, nodding toward his building. “You can come in, warm up, settle down, and then in the morning I’ll help you with paperwork for a restraining order if you like. Or I can take you to a shelter tonight. Up to you.”
She recoiled at the word "shelter".
“He’d find me.”
Her fear seemed real enough.
“Come on, Naomi. You can stay a little while.”
She looked at him as if he’d just handed her breath.
Inside the apartment, she stood near the door at first, small and wary, while Hutch put the mangled groceries in the sink and found a dry towel.
“There's the bathroom if you need,” he said. “I have tea, coffee, soup, and some fruit and cereal.”
“Tea would be nice. With honey? If you have it?”
He made it while she washed up. When she came back into the room, the towel had taken some of the damp from her hair and brought the tiredness underneath into sharper focus. She looked younger that way. More lost.
They sat at opposite ends of the sofa with mugs of honey tea in their hands.
Bit by bit, her cover story came out.
“Rick gets mean when he drinks. I left him twice before, went back twice before, and tonight I finally ran for good. He said he’d kill me if he ever found me again.”
Hutch listened, asked careful questions, told her the options she had. She seemed to relax a little.
When it drew late, Hutch stood and said, “You can take the bed.”
“No, I don't want to impose.”
“I insist.”
She stared at him for a second, then looked down into her tea. “Why are you being nice to me? Because it's your job?”
Hutch gave a faint shrug. “Cops aren't paid to be nice, we're paid to enforce the law and help victims. Nice is a bonus.” He smiled on the last part, and she smiled back, which changed her face into something soft, almost girlish.
He set her up in the bedroom with one of his flannel shirts and clean sheets. Then, because he couldn't quite talk himself out of it, he said from the doorway, “If you need a few days to figure out where you’re going or what you'll do, that’s okay too.”
She nestled down in the bed under the sheet, eyes wide with something close to relief.
“Really?”
“For a few days,” Hutch said. “Then I'll help you with whatever you want. Shelter, restraining order, whatever helps.”
She nodded and drew the sheet up under her chin. “Thank you.”
Hutch closed the door most of the way, and lay down on the sofa.
He was asleep before he could decide whether he was being kind or foolish.
::
“You lying little tramp.”
These words spoken by an unfamiliar male voice snapped Hutch from sleep.
He sat up and saw a man in a khaki uniform holding a gun on Naomi aka Melinda in his kitchen, backing her against the kitchen sink.
“Rick,” she said fearfully as she looked from Bruce to Hutch, “how'd you find me?”
Hutch jumped off the sofa and headed for their only chance--his holstered gun hanging from a closet peg, but Bruce fired first, the impact striking high in the chest and spinning him to the floor.
Bruce grabbed Melinda's arm and yanked her toward the door. She fought, cursed, clawed all the way.
“Let go of me!”
He hit her open-hand and dragged her on out, then down the stairs.
Hutch tried to go after them on hands and knees, right arm useless, warm blood dripping down his chest and side and seeping through his shirt.
Fighting darkness, he dragged himself to the phone, the receiver slipping, fumbling to dial with his left hand.
::
Starsky answered on the fourth ring, voice thick with early-morning sleep and irritation. “Yeah?”
“St... sh... shot...”
Then silence.
::
The Torino bumped the curb in front of Venice Place, ambulance behind.
Starsky flew up the stairs, gun out, and kicked the door in, finding Hutch on the floor beside the phone in a widening dark stain.
He dropped down, touched his face, then his neck. Alive. “Hutch. Who.”
Barely awake.
Hutch’s eyes opened a fraction. He tried to focus and found Starsky by instinct if not by sight.
“Naomi,” he whispered. “Rick.”
“Who?”
The medics entered with their gear, working quick, telling Starsky to move.
“Shot,” Starsky told them. “That's all I know.”
“Single gunshot wound,” one medic said. “High right chest, maybe shoulder. He’s losing blood.”
Starsky leaned in close while they cut the shirt and packed the wound. “Stay with me, buddy. Hear me?”
Hutch’s blue gaze flickered toward him, tried to stay on him, but his eyes drifted closed.
::
At Memorial Hospital, they took Hutch through the double doors and left Starsky with blood on his hands, two unfamiliar names, and a rage that had nowhere to go.
He found a phone and called Huggy.
“Starsk? You sound bad.”
Starsky's voice was weak with worry. “Somebody shot Hutch. We're here at Memorial. He said two names before he passed out--Naomi and Rick. You heard anything?”
There was a pause.
“Well, man,” Huggy said slowly, “haven't heard anything on a Naomi and Rick, but some dude in a prison guard uniform came into my place late last night, not lookin' too happy, said he was looking for a woman named Melinda Rogers, escaped from a women’s prison. Name on his uniform said Bruce Fallon.”
Starsky gripped the phone harder. “Aliases. Damn it. Thanks, Hug. You're a goldmine.”
Starsky called Dobey next and gave him what he had. “Simmons and Babcock need to run it down, Cap'n. I’m staying here.”
Dobey didn’t object. “Got it. I'll call the prison. I'm keeping you both in my prayers.”
::
The doctor came out nearly an hour later, snapping off gloves.
“He’s stable, Dave. Bullet hit high in the shoulder and clipped through tissue but missed the lung and the vessels and everything vital. He lost blood and we’re watching him closely, but he’s going to make it.”
Starsky shut his eyes. “Thank God. Can I see him?”
“For a few minutes. He’s in ICU and he’s under medication.”
::
Hutch was asleep the first time Starsky saw him.
He looked paler than the sheets and too still under the bandages and the monitors. Starsky stood by the bed and let his hand reach toward a partner he nearly lost.
“Hey buddy,” he said with a tearful swallow. “I don't know what happened, but it's gonna be okay. The guys are gettin' Naomi and Rick, or Melinda and Bruce, or whoever they are. Just get better.”
Hutch didn’t move. A nurse came in to check Hutch, and brought Starsky a chair, which he took and sat down in, his eyes remaining on his partner and refusing to leave him.
::
By dawn, Hutch was awake enough to look around and see who was sitting in the chair beside him.
Starsky leaned forward with a sweet smile. “Hiya.”
Hutch’s mouth moved before sound came. “Do I look as bad as I feel?”
“You look B-E-A-utiful, Blintz.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere.”
Starsky told him what had gone down, and Hutch listened with his head turned slightly toward him, eyes clouded by pain medicine and what only Starsky could recognize as embarrassment.
No need to explain. Starsky knew that look. “You got a rescue complex, Blondie.”
Hutch let out half a breath that sounded like a laugh of self-derision. “White Knight to the rescue.”
“Can't be too hard on ya. You saved me more than once.”
Hutch's eyes turned to the ceiling, as if to find answers there. “She lied to me, Starsk, and I believed her. Played me like a violin.”
“You were just being you. Just glad you're okay. Next time, though, clue me in when you take strange ladies in for the night.”
Hutch smiled wanly. “Yeah, right.”
Starsky saw Hutch's eyelids drowsing toward sleep again, and stayed quiet so his partner could drift off again.
A nurse poked her head in, saw Hutch asleep, and motioned for Starsky to come to the door.
“Captain Dobey's on the phone for you. You can take it at my desk.”
::
Starsky was reading a Photoplay magazine when Hutch woke up again.
“Welcome back, Wonder Boy.”
Hutch rubbed his eyes with his good hand. “Dobey call with an update?”
“I'll tell you later.”
“What's wrong with now?”
“It's bad news. Might want to wait a few days.”
“Starsky, I'm not a baby. I'm a grown man, a cop in case you've forgotten, and your partner. You already said it was bad, so just go ahead and tell me.”
Starsky closed his magazine and set it aside. “Okay. Simmons and Babcock found the two of them in a motel outside Bakersfield. Bruce, who you knew as Rick, and Melinda, who you knew as Naomi. He killed her, then himself.”
Hutch was quiet as he closed his eyes.
For a while there was only the monitor and the heat hissing through the vent and the large, unpretty fact of reality sitting between them.
Finally Hutch said, “I should have stopped him. I tried, I--”
Starsky leaned forward in his chair. “She was an escaped convict, Hutch. She didn't come clean with you and it put you in the crosshairs. Violence doesn't play by the rules. You know that. I don't know what kind of charade they were playin', but this isn't your fault.”
Hutch turned his face to the glass window of the ICU room.
Starsky let the silence sit until it softened. A few minutes passed, then Hutch reached for his hand, and Starsky gripped it back.
::
Recovery came in pieces.
First the hospital. Then Starsky’s house, while Huggy hired a crew to clean Hutch's place of blood and broken furniture. Hutch's shoulder wound would require help, and later, some physical therapy.
Huggy came by with stew and gossip and a six pack. Dobey dropped in with a batch of his wife Edith's triple chocolate brownies with caramel drizzle and walnuts.
One afternoon, when the stitches were out and the sling was gone for part of the day, Starsky found him standing in the kitchen looking out the window with his good hand wrapped around a coffee cup.
“You planning an escape, partner?”
Hutch didn’t turn, but his lips hinted a smile. “Thinking.”
Starsky hopped up and sat on the counter. “Sounds dangerous.”
“Some cases, Starsk, feel like everybody loses.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Do we make any difference?”
Starsky gave a half-shrug. Then, “Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t. But we still do our thing, and we do what we can.”
::
The Dobeys invited them over for dinner the next Sunday.
Edith made roast chicken. Cal was in charge of the console stereo. Huggy brought strawberry pie, and Rosie colored quietly at one end of the table. Captain Dobey invited a young lady named Joey that they had helped when she was a teenager, and she brought her fiance.
The talk around the table was easy at first. School. Jobs. Movies. Music. Cars. Wedding plans.
Then Joey said with a pointed look to Starsky and Hutch, “It's cool to be here with you guys. I'm going to Bay City Community College now. Yep. Getting a degree in communications. Then I'm gonna intern at the radio station, then... who knows? The world is my oyster. And I owe it all to you two.”
Starsky and Hutch looked at each other, realizing that some of the seeds they planted along the way actually took root and produced, and Captain Dobey thought it was a good time for them to hear it. The bad roads were real. The losses were real. The wreckage was real. But so were the times they managed to turn someone around before the edge.
Hutch sat back in his chair and took it in. Starsky smiled and picked up his fork, glad that for one night, this one at least, the good outweighed the bad.
end