Chapter 2
“What’s up?” Ridley leaned in, apparently expecting something big.
“An assignment.” Pinkerton raised both of his wild and wooly, salt and pepper brows. “Undercover.”
Though Ridley lit right up, like the star atop the Rockefeller Center tree, Rocco was a bit more dubious. They were pretty low on the totem pole. Any assignment Pinkerton was going to hand to “Low Fat” and “Howdy Doody” was most likely one no one else wanted. “What kind of assignment?” he asked.
“Have either one of you ever heard of Anastasia Pomeranian?”
Rocco glanced toward Ridley, who shook his head no. Then Ridley gasped. “Wait. Do you mean Anastasia Panamarenko?”
The captain checked his file. “That’s what I said.”
“She some foreign dignitary?” Rocco inquired.
“Better.” Ridley put a hand on Rocco’s forearm. “She’s the current Olympic figure skating champion.”
“No wonder I don’t know who she is,” Rocco said sourly.
“You will now,” Pinkerton told him. “There’s been a crime committed.”
Ridley gasped again.
“You got a slow leak there, Cumberland?”
“Sorry, sir.”
“She’s appearing in an ice show.”
“Nutcracker on Ice…with Mikolas Kavivitz,” Ridley said dreamily. “From the Czech Republic. He’s the current men’s gold medalist. They both took the past two seasons off from competitive skating to concentrate on shows and exhibitions.”
“You sneak in here and read the file, Howdy Doody?”
“No, sir. I’m a huge fan of both of theirs. I’m a huge fan of figure skating in general.”
“Shocker,” Pinkerton said sarcastically.
“I even tried to get tickets to their show. Sold out.” Ridley punctuated the statement with a frown. “She was a Russian orphan discovered at age thirteen and groomed for superstardom by the coach who adopted her, and he went from rags to riches when the Czech government decided he was too handsome not to be famous for something.”
“God bless Eastern Europe,” Rocco muttered.
“They were both in Sports Illustratedafter the 2014 Games, Roc. You know…the issue where athletes pose naked. I looked at it every day for a month.” Ridley smirked lasciviously. “I’d always wanted to see Mikolas with no clothes on.”
“Someone else wanted to see him with no head on, Cumberland. Him and her. Can you say decapitation?” Pinkerton dropped a rather sizeable box on his desk, then feigned slitting his throat with his thumb and a sound effect.
“Is that…?” Rocco felt ill.
When Pinkerton flipped the lid off, Ridley, who’d stood for a better view, gasped so hard he nearly sucked in the captain’s ugly necktie.
“Please tell me there aren’t two heads in there,” Rocco said.
“Dolls,” Pinkerton replied.
“Not just dolls, collectors’ items, Captain.” Ridley sat so hard it was as if he actually fainted. “They’re quite expensive—very, very rare. The artist only makes ten of each. The winner gets one for free, and one goes into the figure skating museum in Colorado Springs. Everyone else has to pay. A lot. I can’t imagine anyone being crazy enough to destroy one.”
“That’swhat makes whoever did this crazy?” Rocco asked.
Ridley studied the box, picking it up with two tissues from a holder the captain probably kept on his desk to clean up after masturbating. “With their heads smashed, how do you know they’re supposed to be Anastasia and Mikolas?”
“Well, it says so on the box, see?” Pinkerton showed it to them, the two names, printed in simple block letters. “No return address. No prints or DNA, just the names. The box was delivered sometime before or during the first U.S. show in Denver. Apparently, fans send gifts to the venue that get shipped over to the performers’ hotel or something?”
“Yes,” Ridley stated. “Figure skating devotees are very loyal…very demonstrative.”
“Very homicidal,” Pinkerton added. “At least one is, maybe.”
Rocco finally took a glance. The porcelain dolls, one male, one female judging by the haircuts on what was left of their porcelain, disconnected heads, not the mutual nothingness between their legs, were covered in some sort of red liquid.
“Forensics tested the blood. It’s animal, not human.”
“Good to know,” Rocco said, fighting back his gag reflex.
“But it is blood, which is part of why this is being taken as a serious threat.”
Ridley looked stricken. “Who would want to hurt a couple of figure skaters?”
“Anyone talk to Tonya Harding yet?” Rocco jested.
“You know Tonya Harding?” Ridley asked.
“Well, yeah. Everyone heard of that whole thing…where the other girl…Nancy Harrigan—”
“Kerrigan.”
“Got whacked in the knee to take her out of competition right before the Olympics. It was the first and last time I paid any attention to figure skaters, the last time half of America could name two.”
“Television ratings did go way up that year. Sadly, fewer and fewer people are watching each year since,” Ridley lamented.