I'm a street cop. I was never really interested in being a detective. I love my job. I got a good captain, Captain Dobey and a good partner, Hank Stevenson. He's been on the force for a while, too. He's happy cruising the streets, like me.

Anyway, I did something that really has me worried. It all started when one of our detectives disappeared. His name's Ken Hutchinson, a tall good-looking blond, the All-American boy type. They told us to be on the lookout for him in roll call that first morning. The order was repeated the next few mornings, because he didn't turn up. No one had any leads on him. Everybody knew his partner, Dave Starsky, was frantic about him.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't have anything against either one of them. I had seen Starsky and Hutchinson around. Starsky calls his partner "Hutch", and most of the guys in the precinct do too. These two seem to be good guys, very good cops. Honest and all. And nice. Always friendly, kidding around with the other cops. But everyone knows that they have something special. Whatever it is, it goes beyond Partnership and Friendship. Just seeing them together, you know that these two will do anything for each other.

Which makes what happened not that surprising, I guess.