A Winter's Kill
| Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Winter's Kill |
| Author(s): | Carol Davis |
| Date(s): | April 1977 |
| Length: | |
| Genre: | gen |
| Fandom: | Starsky & Hutch |
| External Links: | |
Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
A Winter's Kill is a 155-page gen Starsky & Hutch novel by Carol Davis, based from an idea by Beckie Higginbotham.
This story takes place on the ski slopes and a lodge in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, U.S.
Related Stories
- Tea Leaves and Crystal Balls (February 1976)
- Kingpin (March 1976)
- The Glass Triangle (1976)
- The Next Voice You Hear (October 1976)
- No Fury Like a Woman Scorned (February 1977)
- A Winter's Kill (April 1977)
Its Early Date
This story predates the early and seminal zine series Zebra Three.
It was written during the second season. One clue: when Hutch discusses his ex-wife, it is Nancy. This is because Vanessa Hutchinson does not appear until the third season.
Plot Description
Starsky, Hutch, and Hutch's current girlfriend (an original character named Elaine Harris) arrive for a ski vacation and get involved in a murder investigation involving spoiled fraternity and sorority members.
Elaine is a widow, and there is much talk about Mormonism, and that if she marries Hutch, whether he will convert.
Starsky meets a college-aged woman who takes nude photographs of men, and wants Starsky to be a model. Starsky agonizes a bit about privilege, and age differences, and then has sex with said photographer in a bathtub.
Elaine tells Hutch about Mormon ceremonies.
Hutch and Elaine break up.
Starsky ends up sleeping with another college-aged photographer of nudes.
There isn't a lot of skiing, but there are murders to be solved.
Excerpts
Among the crowd at Deseret was a small group of students from James College in the southern part of the state, members of the school's most exclusive fraternity and sorority, Theta Kappa and Delta Epsilon. They were the cream of the crop as far as their school was concerned, and, with the exception of one boy and one girl, were gifted with the kind of conceit that comes from knowing that you attend the best school, belong to the best club, wear the best clothes, and drive the best car available.
Numbering seven and seven, the members of TK and Delta had come to Deseret to spend their Christmas far from the stiflingly affectionate atmosphere of home, up in the mountains where they were free to be as conceited and free- living as they pleased, expending their excess energy on the, slopes before the start of the spring semester at James.
What none of them knew two days before Christmas was that nearly half of them would never make it back to the James campus to finish their school year.
The brown-haired girl in the front passenger seat beside Starsky, dressed in dark slacks and a heavy white sweater that concealed a figure every bit as good as the Playboy cover girl, hitched around to peer over the tops of her Foster Grants at Hutch. "You're still tired from that stakeout last night, aren't you?" she asked sympathetically. "I'm not tired," Starsky replied, "and I was there longer than he was."
[...]
"I see," said Ellen, reaching over the back of the seat' to touch Hutch's cheek briefly. He responded with a
frown, knowing that anything less would inspire Starsky to begin another chorus of "Sleighride. " Ellen Haines smiled at him and took off her sunglasses. She was attractive without being pretty, the pleasant homey type, both her looks and her personality coming from her hundred-year Mormon heritage. Her family had no great beauties, no outgoing, slightly feather headed females of the sort Hutch had been accustomed to dating. She was quiet, introspective, the woman behind the man, owner of a degree in Education from Brigham Young University, and - also painfully contrary to what Hutch had been accustomed to - she insisted that their relationship go no further than what he had been able to coax from his giggling girlfriends in junior high school.
"Nineteen years old? Twenty?" Hutch shrugged. "[Uncle George] usually doesn’t bother with anybody that young, but if they're all that’s available, I suppose he’ll have to make do. As long as they’re legal. The one thing neither of us goes for is jail bait."
"Jail bait?"
"Under eighteen."
"Oh." Ellen settled into Hutch's embrace and rested her head against his. "Have you...gone with a lot of girls since you were divorced, Ken?"
"I haven’t kept count. I guess you could say a lot."
She had another question in mind, but refrained from asking it. The strictness of her upbringing kept her from talking about sex as much as it kept her from engaging in it. "You probably see more people in a year than I've seen since Tom died," she said instead.
"Maybe."
"I'm glad you decided to come."
"So am I.”
"Even if you can’t go looking for ski bunnies with Starsky?"
"I don't want to look for any ski bunnies. I haven’t gone with a college girl since I graduated from college.
I'm very content being here with you."
"They understood because I also told them that you're the first man that I’ve felt strongly about since Tom died. They seemed to think that was a good enough reason not to spend Christmas at home."
Hutch said, "They think you're grooming another husband?"
"I don’t know. Maybe."
"Are you?"
"Not intentionally, no. Not any more than I'd intentionally try to convert you. I'm not that kind of a person."
"Did you tell them I’m not a Mormon?"
"Yes."
"What did they say?"
She was tempted not to tell him, but he gave her an encouraging look. "They said," she replied, "that if I really do care for you, and if we’re serious enough to think about getting married, then I ought to take you to church with me and convince you to convert." She stopped, then went on. "It’s the way they feel, Ken. They don't understand that it's possible to care for someone who's not a Mormon, and not care whether that someone converts or not. But I don’t want you to convert. It wouldn't be right, not just to make them happy."
"Tom was Mormon, though."
"Fiercely."
Settling back on the sofa and propping his feet on the hand-hewn coffee table, Hutch thought for a moment, then said, "I’ve never been very religious in any kind of a way. But if you want to talk, I'll listen."
"I've been kidding myself," Hutch said, his back to her so that he wouldn't have to endure her crestfallen expression. "I thought maybe it would work out. I thought if I tried hard enough, we could make something out of this, something kind of special. Maybe we'd even end up getting married eventually. But I can't take this. It's making me nervous, and tired, and mighty goddamn frustrated. I've been kidding myself, but I'm not going to do it any more. I can't go four goddamn months without..."
She said nothing, and the quiet was as piercing as his voice. More than a minute had gone by when she finally replied, "I wondered."
"Wondered what?"
"How long it would last."
"Starsky was right. He told me I wouldn't make it.
And I can't. You just go find yourself a nice Mormon guy who. likes to take cold showers, and I'm going back up there and find myself a ski bunny."
Ellen said quietly, "Do you know how foolish you sound?"
"I don't know and I don't care."
"Then I suppose Starsky knows you better than I do."
"If I wanted somebody to cook for me and carry on nice long philosophical conversations with, I'd move in with my sister Kate [1]. I lived with her for a long time. It was easier than pretending I'm happy holding your hand while Starsky is up there screwing some gorgeous blonde in your aunt's bathroom."
Her protests were even less convincing than those he'd heard from his girlfriends in high school. If he had thought she genuinely wanted no part of making love with him, he would have let her go. But as her mouth was saying no, her eyes were saying yes. "My partner warned me about you," Starsky said.
"He did?"
"Told me photographers were horny people."
"Nooo," said Kristy.
Starsky said, "He makes a lot of sense. Not all the time, but every so often. He used to know a photographer."
"Ohhh," said Kristy.
"I'd get him for letting me fall through the ice, but what he's going through is bad enough. Wouldn't be fair to make him suffer any more." Starsky concluded, "I'll just tell him he was right, and let it go at that."
Kristy said, "I really don't..."
"Yeah," said Starsky, "and I really do."