This story was first published in 1980. Thanks go to SHaron for scanning and proofing, and to Myha for not eating the entire last page of the zine when it was accidentally left within range of her inquisitive teeth .

PART ONE

MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN COWBOYS

by

TERI WHITE

PART TWO

IV

It was nearly three A.M. when the phone rang.

Hutch, who had finally managed to fall asleep despite the comings and goings of his fellow motel guests, none of whom seemed to stay longer than an hour, rolled over and swung an arm into the darkness. "'Lo?"

"Ken?"

"Yeah? Who's this?"

"It's me. Tyler."

"Oh, yeah." Hutch shook his head, trying to wake up. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I mean, everything is okay. Everything is great. You can stop looking for Andy." Tyler sounded a little drunk.

"What? You mean he came back?" So much for my gut feelings, Hutch thought.

"Yeah. Well, no, not exactly, but...."

Hutch sat up, reaching for the lamp and then blinking against the sudden flood of brightness. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"I got a message from him."

"A message." Hutch bit his lower lip for a moment. "What kind of a message, Tyler?"

The man took a couple of deep breaths, obviously trying to control the building excitement in his voice. "This guy just called. Andy asked him to. He said Andy was in some kind of trouble, but that it was all gonna work out. I'm supposed to pick him up in an hour."

Hutch didn't like this; he didn't like it more than he hadn't liked anything in a very long time. "Where are you supposed to meet him?" he asked.

"There's an abandoned gas station a few miles west of town."

"I'm going with you," Hutch said flatly.

"Hey, thanks, but no. The guy said Andy wants me to come alone." Tyler's voice sobered a little. "I think the poor kid is really scared about something."

Hutch pulled a hand through his tangled hair, trying to think how best to say what had to be said. "Tyler," he began quietly, "I think I better come."

"But Andy wants—"

"What if the message isn't from Andy?" The words, clipped and hard, seemed to lie between them, even over the phone.

"But..." The protest died and Tyler was quiet. "All right," he said finally.

There was something in his voice that made Hutch ache to offer a word of hope, just an anchor that the man could hold on to. He sounded like he was drowning from the weight of his pain; it was a feeling that Hutch knew too well. "If it turns out to be like the guy said, Tyler, I can at least meet Andy. Maybe I can even help him with his trouble, whatever it is. "

"Sure, Ken." All the earlier ebullience was gone from his voice and now he only sounded tired again. ''I'll pick you up in a few minutes."

"'Kay." Hutch hung up, then immediately lifted the receiver again, and dialed Los Angeles

Starsky sounded like a man more than half-asleep. "Hunh?"

"Starsk? It's me."

"Whassa matter?"

"You awake enough to listen?"

Starsky cleared his throat loudly. "Yeah, buddy. What's up?"

"Our client just got a message that was supposed to come from Jones."

"Uh-huh. You sound like a non-believer."

"Yeah, you could say that." Hutch began pulling his clothes on as he talked. "I just don't have a lot of faith in meets that are supposed to come down at abandoned gas stations at four in the morning."

"You cynic." Starsky took a noisy drink of something. "I guess you're probably going with him?"

"Yeah. He was against it, but I convinced him."

"Terrific. You and your silver tongue."

Hutch snorted. He slipped his shoes on. "I think you better get out here. First thing in the morning."

"No problem. I've already got some feelers out on the Brustein character you told me about before."

"That was fast."

"Yeah, well, Huggy's got his ear to the very pulse of the music world. I'm quoting him."

"Okay." He shoved the shirttail in and zipped his fly. "Look, don't come in here as yourself."

"I need a cover?"

"Yeah. For a little while anyway. I've got nothing so far, but everybody knows I'm snooping around looking for Andy, so nothing's gonna drop in my lap. When I'm not around, they might open up a little. We don't know each other, okay?"

"Who the hell are you anyway?"

Hutch grinned. "That's the idea." He was trying to hold the receiver and slip into his shoulder holster at the same time. "I gotta go."

"Yeah, okay." He paused. "Hey."

"What?"

"Be careful what you step in, partner," Starsky said briskly.

Hutch understood the concern behind the almost light-hearted words. "Sure. Always. See you."

Starsky sighed. "Yeah, see you."

Hutch finished quickly and was waiting in front of the motel when a battered green van with Wyoming plates pulled to a stop. Tyler leaned over to unlock the passenger door. "You sure that you oughta be coming along?" he asked as Hutch climbed in.

"Yes," Hutch replied, settling himself not on the seat, but on the floor behind Tyler, out of sight. "Whatever's coming down, I need to be there." The other man still looked doubtful. "Look, Tyler, maybe I'm wrong about this and the message really was from Andy. I hope so."

The van pulled out onto the highway. "It must be from Andy," he said stubbornly. "Why would somebody say that if it wasn't?"

Hutch settled back against a saddle. "Tell me about Andy," he said suddenly, expecting Tyler to reply with "What about him?" or something equally uninformative.

But the big man surprised him. He leaned over the wheel, tensely watching the empty road. "I can tell you how we come to be together, if that's what you want," he said softly.

"Tell me."

"The rodeo was in Carson City. This was in 1965." He shook his head. "Seems like a long time ago, don't it?"

Hutch tried to remember 1965. "A long time," he agreed.

"There was this kid that kept hanging around. Scrawny little blond. Kept trying to talk to all the rodeo people, but he had such a hard time with the words that...well, most folks wouldn't waste too much time on him."

"But you did?"

"Hell, he was a nice kid. Fifteen, he was then." Tyler pulled to a stop at a railroad crossing, then moved on again. "He stuck close to me the last couple days of the show, toting me coffee, whatever, you know? Then, on the last night before we left Carson City, he just upped and disappeared. I sort of missed him. Anyway, when everything was done for the night, I went back to my pick-up, and damned if he wasn't sitting there waiting for me." He shook his head, smiling a little. "I was so glad to see him." He frowned. "He was running away from the folks that raised him, back in Baker. They weren't his real parents; he never knew his own ma or pa."

"You helped him run away?"

Tyler glanced back again. "When he first told me what he was doing, I said that he shouldn't. Know what? He just turned around and pulled up his shirt. His back was all tore up, like he'd been horsewhipped. Must've hurt like hell. That was how those people treated him." There was an under-current of cold anger in the quiet words. "I cleaned him up and tried to make him feel better. Just made me sick to think about the kid running around all that time, so friendly and smiling, and all the while he was hurting."

"Life is rough for kids sometimes."

"Yeah. You know, I always figured that's why he has so much trouble talking, 'Cause of the mean way they treated him."

"Probably," Hutch said, thinking back over the many cases of child abuse he'd encountered during his years on the force. "So after you treated his wounds, you decided to let him stay?"

"Well, sure. I had to, didn't I? What was I supposed to do? Send him back to those people? Or turn him over to the cops? Hell, he needed somebody to look out for him." He paused "And I guess maybe I needed somebody, too. I was always sort of a loner, you know? Even though I was fifteen years older, Andy and I hit it off real good." He was quiet again, seemingly lost in thought—or memories. "I put him to work right away. We used to do the team-roping event. Then he sort of took to clowning, and he's real good at it." There was pride in his voice. "Plus, like I said, he does pick-up on the bronc riding." Tyler turned off the main highway and headed down a dirt road. "We set to saving our money, so we could buy us a ranch. Just got it. Well, a start, anyway. Eight hundred acres in Wyoming."

"Congratulations."

"Yeah, we've worked real hard." The van jerked to a stop. Tyler took out a cigarette and lit it. "The guy said to wait here." He coughed. "Damn cigarettes. Andy don't smoke. He's been trying to get me to quit."

Hutch shifted slightly, pulling the Magnum from its holster. "Did you recognize the voice on the phone at all, Tyler?"

''No."

There didn't seem to be much more to say right then, so they sat in silence as Tyler finished the first cigarette and promptly lit another. "Hell," he mumbled, "I been smoking since I was eleven. Can't quit now." Suddenly, he stiffened. "Somebody's coming," he said in a low voice. "Around the right side of the building."

"Does it look like Andy?"

"Too dark for me to tell. Maybe. Please, let it be," he added softly as he opened the van door and stepped out. "Andy? That you, kid?"

It was then that Hutch heard the faint, too-familiar sound of a gun being awkwardly cocked, readied. "Tyler!" he yelled, lurching forward between the seats to grab the lanky man and pull him down. At that same moment, the windshield of the van shattered beneath the impact of the shotgun blast.

Hutch raised his gun and fired blindly into the night, giving cover until Tyler had scrambled to safety next to him. "Stay here," he ordered hoarsely.

He opened the rear door just enough so that he could slip out. It was quiet now, the figure in the shadows seeming to have melted away. Hutch made his way slowly all around the empty building, hearing in the distance the sound of a car engine start, die, start again, then vanish. All he found was a single expended shell, which he picked up carefully with his handkerchief and tucked into his jacket pocket.

Swinging the rear door open, he turned on the over-head light. "You okay?"

Tyler sat very still, staring at Hutch. "Why is this happening?" His voice was soft and bewildered. "Why is somebody doing this to us? We're nobodies, Andy and me." He shook his head. "I don't understand."

Hutch crawled in and sat beside him, beginning to reload the Magnum. "You okay?" he asked again, and after a moment, Tyler nodded. "Is there something you haven't told me? I can't operate without all the facts, man. You must have some idea of what's going on, and why."

"I don't. I swear to god, Ken, I don't." Tyler pounded his fist against the saddle. "Why? I'm nothing but a second-rate cowboy. I've never once won top money, not in twenty-five years. All I want to do is go to Wyoming with Andy and raise cattle." He shuddered a little, like a man with a sudden chill. "I'm forty-five years old, Ken, and I don't know why everything is starting to fall apart."

Hutch put his gun away. "Take it easy, Tyler," he said. "We'll find out what's going on."

Two tanned, calloused hands rubbed the saddle absently, almost tenderly. "Where's Andy?"

"I don't know yet. I'm trying to find him."

After a minute, Tyler crawled forward and began to pick up the pieces of glass that covered the seats. "I reckon you figured out that Andy and me are more than just friends," he said in a low voice, not looking at Hutch.

Hutch was helping him to clear away the glass. "That's your business, Tyler, not mine. Unless it has some bearing on the case."

"It couldn't. Could it?"

"I don't see how."

Tyler pulled an empty paper bag from under the seat and shoved glass into it. "I just wanted you to know," he said. "And something else...."

"What?"

Tyler looked up then, meeting Hutch's gaze evenly. "I never touched him that way when he was a kid."

"I believe that, Tyler."

The bag of glass was dropped outside, and they climbed into the seats. Tyler put both hands on the wheel. "I never would have touched him at all, but he...he wanted it. He came to me one night just after he turned twenty...ten years ago...and...." He shook his head. "He was so scared. Scared of asking me to love him."

Hutch was staring out into the darkness as he listened, knowing that Tyler was not really talking to him at all, but to the night itself, trying in some hopeless way to fight off the demons that suddenly seemed to be attacking his life.

"Hell," the cowboy said gratingly, "I'd have given him the moon if he'da asked for it." His fingers moved convulsively around the steering wheel.

"Let's go, Tyler," Hutch said wearily. "No sense hanging around here."

Tyler started the van. "I guess some folks think what Andy and I do is wrong." He glanced sidewise at Hutch.

Hutch sighed, rubbing at the dirty window with the back of one hand. "I was a cop for a long time," he said finally, "and I saw a lot of what people do to one another. Most of it isn't very pretty. If once in a while two people can manage to love each other in the middle of the whole screwed up mess, I can't see a damned thing wrong with it."

"Andy and me belonged together, that's all. We belong together," he amended quickly. "We were friends first and we still are."

Neither man spoke during the rest of the ride back to Hutch's motel. The van pulled to a stop in front of the door to his room. "You be careful," he said, getting out.

Tyler shrugged.

Hutch slammed the door closed, the sound echoing in the early morning quiet.

"Ken?"

"Yeah?"

"You think Andy is okay?"

Hutch didn't want to answer that.

Apparently Tyler decided that he didn't really want to have the question answered either. "What I mean is," he said quickly, "do you think whoever's got him is treating him all right?" His hand worked the gears again. "I promised him, you know, back when he was fifteen, that nobody would ever hurt him that way again. I hope nobody is."

The battered van pulled away with a roar.

Hutch stood there a moment, watching as the van disappeared, then he turned sharply and went into the room. The goddamned power of the human animal for self-delusion, he thought as he pulled off his clothes angrily. It was a huge joke; except that it wasn't funny at all. Poor Tyler Monroe, worrying that somebody might be horsewhipping Andy Jones again, like they had once beaten a scared kid. Hutch knew deep in his gut that Jones was beyond being hurt anymore, at least in this life. But Tyler wouldn't face that. Couldn't face it.

He climbed into bed. Cut the shit, Hutchinson, he told himself. You've pulled that same dumb routine in your life. He could remember spending night after night locked in that jail cell, waiting for Starsky to come back from wherever he was, and make everything all right again. He'd made up stories, too, not so very different from the lies Tyler was telling himself now. Amnesia. Kidnapping. Any kind of shit that would get him through the night.

And it happened, dammit. Starsky came back.

Hutch closed his eyes and buried his head in the pillow. He wondered how Tyler Monroe would get through the rest of this night. And all the nights to come.

**

V

It was sunny and warm the next morning. There was a large and noisy group gathered around the pool at the Traveler's Inn. The rodeo opened that night, but apparently everyone involved was taking it easy until then. A portable eight-track blasted the sound of Don Williams across the water.

Tyler Monroe wasn't part of the crowd at the pool. Hutch skirted the group quickly, looking without much interest at a big-mouthed man with a movie camera slung over one shoulder. The blond went directly to the second floor and knocked at the door of room 216. As he waited for a response, Hutch leaned over the railing, watching the scene below. The bush-league Fellini was busily directing two girls, both clad in wet teeshirts promoting the rodeo.

After several moments, the door swung open. Monroe, wearing the same battered Levis and a wrinkled green T-shirt, stood there, a beer in his hand. From the bleary way his eyes focused on Hutch, it wasn't the first beer he'd had since their early morning meeting.

Well, Hutch thought, that's one way to make it through the night. A can of beer was better than no company at all. Monroe stepped aside so that Hutch could come in, then closed the door firmly again, shutting out the light and noise.

"Morning," Hutch said.

Tyler nodded.

"You all right?"

"I'm fine, Ken." He sat down.

Hutch tried to see the room in the gloomy half-light. Typical motel stuff, for the most part. Two double beds, one neatly made up, the other a jumbled mess of blankets and sheets. A dresser heavily littered with empty beer cans and flattened cigarette packs. A couple of well-used suitcases were in one corner of the room. He walked over to the dresser and picked up the gold-framed photo sitting there. This was a better picture of Andy Jones. Clad in cut-offs, shirtless and barefooted, he sat perched on the front of a shiny red Volkswagen. He was grinning at the camera. Hutch looked at the face in the photo for a long time, thinking for some reason of Huckleberry Finn. "Nice picture," he said.

Tyler nodded and drank more beer.

"I need to take it with me."

"Will I get it back?"

"Sure. I'll take good care of it."

Tyler nodded again.

Hutch put the picture carefully between the pages of his notebook. Then he leaned against the dresser, crossing his arms. "Tyler, do you understand what last night means?"

The big man turned the beer can around in his fingers several times before answering. "I guess so," he said finally. "It means that Andy being missing ain't just...something that happened "

"Right. It wasn't, in other words, an act of random violence." Damn. He hated it when he still talked like a cop; sometimes he thought it was deliberate, an attempt to keep himself separate from other people and other people's problems. "What I mean, Tyler, is that nobody just mugged Andy or anything, and left him lying in an alley."

One leathery cheek twitched, but Tyler kept quiet.

"Whoever did this was after Andy, just like they were after you last night."

Tyler got up from the chair suddenly and began to walk aimlessly around the room. "You don't mean...." He stopped, cleared his throat and tried again. "You don't mean they blasted him with a shotgun. That ain't what you're saying, is it, Ken?"

Hutch shrugged. "I'm saying that I don't know, Tyler."

Tyler stared at him for a moment, then turned and strode into the bathroom, slamming the door. Hutch sighed and went over to the window. He opened the curtain a little, letting a shaft of sunlight into the gloom. Someone down by the pool shrieked, and there was scattered laughter and applause.

He turned around when Tyler came out, watching as he took another beer from a brown paper bag. "Did you have breakfast?"

"Not hungry."

"You still planning on riding tonight?"

"Yes," Tyler said with sudden savageness. "I told you that we need the money. We have to buy stock for our ranch."

"Then you better stop drinking and have some breakfast." Hutch walked to the phone and dialed room service. He ordered a pot of coffee and some eggs.

Tyler watched sullenly. "You charge extra for playing nursemaid?" he muttered.

"Nope," Hutch replied, sitting on the unrumpled bed.

"You should be out looking for Andy. That's what I'm paying you for, not to hang around here babysitting me."

"Don't tell me how to do my job, Tyler."

They were quiet, listening to the sounds from the pool. Tyler lifted the beer can as if he were going to take another drink; then, instead, he threw it into the wastebasket. Hutch figured that was a step in the right direction. "Okay, buddy," he said quietly. "Can we talk?"

Tyler nodded.

"You said before that Andy didn't—" The green eyes flashed, and Hutch corrected himself quickly. "Andy doesn't have any enemies. Now, man, he's been around the rodeo for fifteen years. You can't tell me he never had a problem with anybody. Not even a saint gets along with the whole world."

It was a moment before Tyler spoke. "Ben Crane and Andy have had some problems."

"Crane?"

"He's one of the other bronc riders."

Hutch jotted the name down. "What's the trouble between them?"

Tyler leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. "Ben thought Andy was a little slow on his pick-up a couple weeks ago in Denver."

"Was he?"

"No." The word was sharp. "Andy does his job."

There was a knock at the door, and Hutch got up to let room service in. They didn't talk again until the girl was gone, and Tyler was eating. "He and Crane fight, did they?"

"Yeah. They were both a little drunk. Didn't mean anything. Crane's been on Andy's back for a long time."

"Why?"

Tyler dumped catsup on his eggs. "Guess Crane just doesn't like him." There was a pause. "He called Andy a queer," Tyler said finally, softly. "Nobody ever did that before." The gaunt face hardened. "If I'da been there...."

"What?"

"Never mind."

Hutch looked at him, frowning a little. "Crane here at the motel?"

"Nope. He has a van, parked out at the fairgrounds."

"Okay. Anybody else?"

Tyler shook his head. "I told you that Andy gets along with people. He's a nice kid."

Hutch nodded. "Can I look through Andy's things?"

"Go 'head. Ain't much to see." Tyler gestured with the fork. "First and second drawers are his."

Hutch stood in front of the dresser and pulled open the top drawer. He'd always hated this part of the job, whether as a cop or now. There was something almost indecent about pawing through another person's belongings, pawing through the pieces of someone else's life.

Tyler had been right; there wasn't much to see. Hutch sighed and pushed around the contents of the drawer. Teeshirts, socks, a couple of belts. Some much-laundered handkerchiefs.

"We don't have a whole lot," Tyler said. "Never needed much."

Hutch didn't answer as he closed the top drawer and opened the next one. It was much the same. Some sweatshirts. A string tie with a gold and silver clasp in the shape of a horse. Underneath it all, he found a battered cigar box. He pulled it out. "What's in here?"

"Don't know exactly. Andy just keeps things in there. He's had that box kicking around for years."

Hutch went back to the bed and opened the box, dumping the contents onto the bedspread. The first thing he picked up was a copy of a birth certificate. One Andrew (No Middle Name) Jones had been born on July 16, 1950, in Los Angeles, California. His mother was listed as Margaret Jones. Father unknown.

Tyler was drinking coffee, watching him with shadowed green eyes.

"You said that Andy didn't know anything about his parents?"

"Right. Oh, he found out his mother's name when he sent off for his birth certificate years ago. The folks that raised him said he was born in L.A." He poured more coffee.

Hutch put down the birth certificate and picked up an old black-and-white photograph. Tyler Monroe, looking younger and a little self-conscious, was watching the camera. Next to him stood a skinny blond teenager. The boy wasn't looking at the camera; he was staring up at Tyler, the expression on his face something between awe and love. Hutch set the picture aside.

The next item was a high school diploma from some correspondence school in Utah. Tyler got to his feet and walked over to take the cheaply embossed document. "I made sure he finished high school," he said. "Did real good, too. Even got some A's. I figured it was important for him to have the damned diploma, just in case he ever wanted to be anything besides a dumb cowboy." He dropped the paper.

There was a Hallmark card, kept carefully in its envelope, exhorting the recipient to get well soon, and signed in a sprawling scrawl. Love, Ty, it said.

"From when he had his appendix out," Tyler explained, although Hutch hadn't asked. "Don't know why he still has the damn thing."

There was a red-white-and-blue campaign flyer, plugging the virtues of one Richard Kingman, a candidate for Congress in the upcoming election. "Andy into politics?"

"No." Tyler looked at the flyer and shrugged.

There wasn't much else to see. A matchbook from someplace called the Spruce Goose in Santa Monica. Tyler said he had never heard of the place. A letter from the Bureau of Records in Los Angeles, stating that there was no death certificate on file for a Margaret Jones during the years designated. Hutch looked up from the letter. "Andy's interested in finding out about his parents, I guess?"

Tyler shook his head. "Not anymore. He gave up on that a long time ago."

"Did he?" Hutch pointed at the date on the letter; it was three months earlier.

Tyler looked at it silently; then he picked up the small picture from the bed and walked back to the chair. He stared at the picture for a long time before speaking. "I thought he gave up on it," he said, sounding puzzled. "We talked about it, you know? Almost ten years ago. I told him it was stupid to keep looking for people who didn't care nothing for him anyway, or they never would have got rid of him. He didn't need them." The tone was defensive.

"Maybe Andy thought he did."

"No," Tyler said stubbornly. "We don't need anybody else. We're a real family, him and me." He looked at the picture again. "I wouldn't ever run out on him like his own folks did, and I wouldn't ever treat him mean like the McCanns."

Hutch gave up the argument with a shrug. He put everything but the picture back into the box, closed it, and stood. "All right, Tyler. I'm going to take off for a while. You be careful today, huh? Stay close to the room."

"No place to go," he said. "Until tonight."

"I'll be back before then."

Tyler watched him walk to the door. "Ken?"

"Yeah?"

"What's gonna happen?"

Hutch opened the door. "I'm going to find out what happened to Andy," he said. Tyler looked at him a moment longer, then nodded. Hutch left the room and went back out into the bright sunshine.

**

VI

Hutch was sitting in the Denny's across from the motel, toying with a cup of coffee, when the obnoxious movie maker came in and sat down on the stool next to him. "You have any film in that thing?" he asked sourly, not looking at the newcomer.

Starsky shrugged. "Nobody noticed." He ordered a chocolate milkshake. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that van with the shattered windshield that's parked over by the motel, would you?"

"That's an example of what happens when you go to four A.M. meets with mysterious phone callers."

The dark blue gaze flickered over him. "You okay?"

"Yeah. And so's our client." Hutch waited as the girl behind the counter set down Starsky's shake, then poured him more coffee. "Speaking of whom, keep an eye on him today, will you? Whoever it was last night might try again."

"Okay." Starsky slurped up some milkshake. "You have any kind of a handle on this yet?"

Hutch sighed. "Wish to hell I did. Andy Jones doesn't seem like the kind of a guy to get himself murdered, but...."

"But you think he did?"

"Hell, Starsk, I don't know." He felt mad and confused at the same time. He gulped the rest of the coffee. "I better get out of here."

"Where you off to?"

"Local cop shop, for a start. Then over to see a guy named Crane who had a fight with our boy Andy not long ago. From there—I don't know. I'll be in touch." He tossed some coins down onto the counter.

Starsky pulled the milkshake toward his mouth again. "We have to stop meeting like this, partner. I'm beginning to feel like a ship that keeps passing in the night."

"Yeah," Hutch agreed ruefully. He started to go, then paused. "Starsk?"

"Hmm?"

"Keep an eye on Tyler, huh?"

"I already said I would, man." Starsky's face was curious.

"Okay," Hutch still didn't leave. "I like the guy, you know, and he's in trouble."

Starsky nodded.

Hutch smiled his thanks and walked out of the restaurant.

~~~

The desk sergeant at the Newcombe Police Department wasn't exactly bowled over by Hutch's private investigator's license. He studied the paper carefully, then handed it back. "So?" he said. "What's the problem?"

"I'd like to see Detective Pevner." That was the name Tyler had given him, the man he'd spoken to that first night.

"He's busy."

"It won't take long." He was much too used to the petty bureaucracy that permeated all police departments to let it upset him. He smiled.

The sergeant frowned, but picked up the desk phone. "Got a private snoop out here," he said, not bothering to disguise the scorn in his voice. "Wants to see you." He listened, then hung up. "Through there. Second door on the left."

"Thanks," Hutch said politely. The overweight cop ignored him.

Pevner was sitting behind a desk that was empty except for one thin case folder. A busy man, perhaps, but still neat. He closed the file and studied Hutch through horn-rimmed glasses. "Yes?"

"My name is Hutchinson. I'm working for a man named Tyler Monroe, trying to find a friend of his. Andrew Jones."

Pevner nodded. "The cowboy."

"Right."

Pevner pushed the glasses back up on his nose. "You're not from Newcombe, are you, Hutchinson?"

"L.A."

"Yeah. Well, look, I told Monroe when he was in that we'd keep an eye out for Jones, but I also said that the man is an adult. He can come and go as he pleases."

"The man is missing."

"Cowboys get drunk and take off all the time."

"Not Andy Jones."

Pevner was quiet for a moment. "Well, Hutchinson, maybe not, but we just don't have the manpower to spend time looking for a cowboy with itchy feet."

"I'm not asking you to. That's why I'm here. I've got lots of time and nothing to do except look for Jones." Hutch settled back in the chair. "I only wanted to ask if you'd co-operate with me, let me in on whatever you might have."

"I don't have anything." Pevner opened a drawer and after a moment, took out a paper. "This is the report Monroe filed."

"I have all that." Hutch paused, watching as the cop took off his glasses and began to clean them with a tissue. "Somebody tried to blow Tyler Monroe away last night."

Pevner looked mildly surprised. He carefully finished polishing the left lens before replacing the glasses and looking at Hutch again. "You don't say?"

Hutch told him briefly about the phone call and the shotgun blast, finishing by taking the expended shell from his pocket and setting it carefully on the desk. Pevner listened to it all without comment, then unwrapped the shell to look at it. "I suppose you want us to waste time trying to lift some prints off of this."

Hutch shrugged. "Humor me. It's all I have."

The cop studied the missing person's report again. He sighed. "I'll circulate a description of Jones and the car at all roll calls."

"Thanks."

"You will report any further incidents like what happened last night? We frown on that kind of thing out here."

Hutch stood. "We frown on it in L.A., too," he said.

They parted with mutual understanding, if not as best buddies, and Hutch left the Newcombe Police Department.

~~~

Starsky sat by the pool, still fiddling with the camera, although everyone seemed to have melted away, probably to get ready for the rodeo. Whatever the hell one did to get ready for that, he thought with a certain amount of foreboding.

He kept one eye on room 216, so he saw when the door opened, and a tall slender man stepped out on the balcony. Monroe peered over the railing and apparently decided that one stranger with a movie camera presented no immediate threat. He came down the steps and sat in a chair on the other side of the pool. He lit a cigarette, staring into the water.

Starsky sat still for a few moments, then stood, shouldering the camera, and walked over. "Hi, there," he said.

Monroe glanced at him. "Howdy," he said softly.

That seemed to be as much as the man was going to say, so Starsky began messing with the camera again, pretending not to know that Tyler was watching him.

"How much one of those things run anyway?"

Starsky looked up. "The camera? Oh, about five hundred dollars for this kind."

click illo to see larger image

"That much, huh?" He smoked in silence for a moment. "I looked at some a couple years ago. Thought maybe I could use it around the rodeo, you know? Movies of the whole thing."

"That'd be nice," Starsky agreed.

"Yeah. Never did it, though."

"Too bad. Still not too late."

Monroe's gaze shifted from the rippling water to Starsky, then back again. "I hope not," he said so softly that Starsky could hardly hear him.

"You been with the rodeo a long time?"

"Twenty-five years."

"That's a while," Starsky said.

"Yeah, long enough." Monroe took a long drink of beer. "This is my last year on the circuit. I'm retiring."

Starsky quit pretending to work with the camera. "Guess you've earned it, after twenty-five years."

"Gonna take up ranching out in Wyoming. We have a spread, small, but good land for cattle." He sighed.

Starsky tossed a lens cap back and forth between his hands.

"Hey," Monroe said suddenly, "you been around the town a little the last day or so?"

"A little," Starsky said cautiously. "Why?"

Monroe pulled out his wallet and flipped it open to a small and fuzzy black-and-white photo. "Maybe you saw this guy? He's about five eleven. Has this stutter when he talks, and—"

Starsky handed the wallet back. "I haven't seen Andy," he said quietly.

Monroe's look at him was sharp. "How'd you know his name?"

"I'm Dave Starsky."

"Ken's partner?"

He nodded. "I wasn't trying to trick you or anything, Tyler. Hutch just wanted me to come in with a cover, so I could move around and maybe hear things more easily."

Tyler nodded. "I guess that makes sense. Ken seems to know what he's doing. You find out anything?"

Starsky sighed. "Not much. I just don't think anybody knows anything. I tossed his name out a few times. Everybody seems to like him."

"Yeah."

He went back to tossing the lens cover from hand to hand as they sat in silence, watching the water.

Tyler stood finally. "I'm tired," he said. "Going upstairs."

"You go on. I'll be here."

"Ken put you to watching me?"

Starsky smiled. "Just in case."

Monroe nodded and walked out to the steps, where he paused. "Mighta been best," he said in a low voice, "if that guy last night had been a better shot."

Starsky looked at him quickly. "Don't be thinking like that," he said. "Don't give up. Not on Hutch and me. Not on yourself. Not on Andy."

"You think he's coming back?"

They stared at one another for a moment. "I don't know," Starsky said honestly. "But I don't think you should give up."

Tyler rubbed a hand across the wrought iron railing. "I don't want to," he said. "But it's hard. You know, Dave, my old man put a gun to his head and blew his brains out. Now, he had a lot of bad breaks in his life, you know? But I never understood how he could do what he did. How could life be so bad that he just wanted to finish it?" His palm slapped against the railing. "But I guess he just finally decided that the whole damned fight wasn't worth the effort." Tyler looked up, squinting into the sun. "I understand the old man now," he said. He was gone up the stairs and into his room before Starsky could reply.

"Shit," Starsky said to the emptiness.

~~~

Hutch was beginning to get a complex. Everybody in the world was too busy to talk to him. Crane, a stocky, greying man was working on some ropes outside his trailer, and he didn't have time to talk to any jerky snooper.

Hutch leaned against Belle. "We can talk while you work," he said pleasantly. "Understand you had a fight with Andy Jones not long ago."

Crane snorted. "Maybe where you come from they call that a fight."

"I guess you know he's missing."

"I heard." Crane tested a knot. "Tough."

"My client thought that maybe you could shed some light on the subject."

"Your client?" He picked up another rope. "That's gotta be Tyler, right?"

Hutch didn't answer.

Crane nodded. "Gotta be. Nobody else gives a damn about J-J-Jones."

This guy would never win a popularity contest, Hutch decided. "Look," he said coldly, "a man is missing. I'm trying to find him. You had a fight with him before he got missing. I might add that the cops are getting interested."

Crane straightened. "All right, pal, listen. Tyler Monroe is okay. He and I have known each other for a long time, since we both was kids back in Oklahoma. I always liked him. Jones is another story. Maybe I don't like him. Is that some kind of goddamned crime? Maybe I think he messed up a good man's life. Far as I know, the chicken shit Supreme Court ain't ruled that I can't think what I want. I think Jones is a jerk. He makes me nervous."

"Because of the stutter?"

"Yeah. And other things."

"Uh-huh." Hutch pushed himself away from the car. "You don't know anything about where Andy Jones might be?"

"Nope."

"Would you tell me if you did?"

Crane looked at him, then back at the knot he was working on. "Sure. Why the hell not?"

Hutch figured that maybe he was telling the truth. As he had said, why the hell not? Some people just looked like they weren't on the up and up. Shifty eyes. Didn't mean a damned thing. "Okay," he said. "Thanks for your co-operation."

Crane grunted a reply.

Hutch opened the car door.

"Hey!" Crane said.

"What?"

He gave the rope a tug. "Might be the best thing that could happen to Tyler, you know."

"What's that?"

"Jones being gone. Wherever he is. Tyler used to be a good man."

Hutch got into the car. "Doesn't bother you that he's hurting?"

"He'll get over it."

Hutch started the car and left the fairgrounds, trying to bring some order to the chaos that cluttered his mind. It was disconcerting when he had a lot of facts that didn't add up to one thing. Andy Jones walks out of the Last Round-Up and disappears. He's a quiet, shy young man who stutters and who wants to find his parents. He has a red VW, also missing, and a middle-aged lover, not missing. A lover, though, who was hurting. Hutch wondered if Jones had a guitar. Wasn't that de rigueur for a cowboy singer? He didn't remember seeing one in the motel room.

The day was moving by too quickly. He drove back to his motel, and drank a Coke from the machine in the hallway as he placed a call to L.A.

Huggy, not surprisingly, was in a hurry.

"She'll wait," Hutch said. "You check out that name Starsk gave you?"

"Has the ebony Ellery Queen ever let you down, good buddy?" There was a pause as Huggy apparently searched for something. "Mr. Albert Brustein, impresario second-class of the music world."

"Second-class? What's that mean?"

"He handles mostly people who ain't arrived yet and who probably never will. Not because they don't have the talent, you understand, but just because most people don't make it."

"Brustein's on the up and up, though?"

"Well...for the most part."

Hutch waited.

"There have been a few rumors to the effect that he deals less-than-honestly with some people."

Hutch finished the Coke and threw the can across the room, almost getting it into the wastebasket. "Such as, Hug?"

"Some songwriter sued him a couple years ago, saying Brustein stole some of his golden lyrics, had another guy record 'em, and neglected to pay for the privilege."

"What happened in the case?"

"It was thrown out for lack of evidence. My source was kinda fuzzy about what happened, but word has it that the star witness took a powder."

That was fairly interesting. Hutch dragged the phone with him as he went to the closet and pulled out a pair of jeans to wear to the rodeo. "Where's this guy operate? You get an address?"

"Yeah. On Hill Street." Again Huggy searched and then read an address and phone number aloud.

"Okay. Thanks, Hug, I appreciate this."

"I prefer an appreciation that I can fold up and put into my pocket."

"Sure, man, you're on my expense account."

Huggy, still in a hurry, bid him a fast good-bye, and hung up.

Hutch finished dressing, picked up the empty Coke can and deposited it neatly in the wastebasket, and left the room.

**

Part Three