Now they were safe again, thought Remo, as only the dead were ever truly safe from harm. But Jesus, what a way to go. The man and woman tangled up in bloody sheets, another bedroom transformed into a mad surgeon's operating theater. The children...
"What's the weapon?" Remo asked. "Machete? Ax? A chain saw?"
"Teeth," said Dr. Smith.
Remo Williams said nothing for a long moment. Then he said, "I see."
He did see. He saw it as big as death.
Smith didn't typically involve CURE in something as mundane as organized-crime murders. Now Remo knew why Smith was involving them this time. "Goddamn it!" he growled.
"Autopsy reports on all nine victims are consistent," Smith continued relentlessly. "Medical examiners from three states have confirmed their findings with the FBI in Washington. It would appear the victims were attacked and killed by one or more wild animals. Aside from the dismemberment, there is persuasive evidence that parts of several bodies were, well, devoured."
"As in eaten."
"That appears to be the case."
"In addition to the damage you can see, the female victim in Nebraska was discovered to have several canine hairs clutched in her hand," Mark Howard said.
"Canine as in dog," Remo stated, feeling hollow.
"There was a witness to the last attack," Smith added. "Or, rather, a witness to the getaway. A neighbor of the Cartiers, one Edward Beasley, heard some kind of a commotion at the time of the attack and ran outside in time to see the, um, the suspects fleeing from the scene."
"Suspects," said Remo, "as in more than one?"
"It gets a little shaky here," Smith said. "The witness has described a pack of dogs, no breed confirmed. They were, he says, accompanied by a monster."
"What kind of monster?"
"His words, not mine," Smith said. "A hairy monster, if you want to be precise."
Mark clarified. "Specifically, he called it 'A hairy wolf man howling at the moon.'"
"To top it all off," Smith said, "saliva from a number of the wounds has been identified as human."
"That bitch!" Remo stated harshly.
"Judith White," Smith intoned morosely.
"Who else?" he demanded angrily. "I let her get away."
"She engineered an escape," Mark Howard said.
"Whatever."
Smith took a deep breath. "We don't think it's her, Remo."
"Huh? Of course it's her."
"There are a number of things about it that don't fit," Howard said. "Even if she is still alive, you did close down her stable."
"So what? You know how fast she works when she sets her mind to it. You drink her special blend, and next thing you're a human animal hungry for meat. This is right up her alley."
"It's not, though," Howard said. "Judith White wouldn't work for organized crime. Why would she?"
Remo gave him a bitter stare. "We're not talking about a woman with a lot of scruples, Junior. She needs cash to fund her little mad-scientist research labs. She wouldn't have qualms about doing hits for the mob if it pays for the Bunsen burners."
"She'd know the crime scenes would be full of odd clues to tip off law enforcement, for one," Smith said. "And she is not fond of publicity."
"Also, the hairs at the scene were canine," Mark Howard reminded Remo. "White has not been known to make much use of canine DNA in her gene-splicing experiments."
Remo was exasperated and angry. "Earth to stupid guy-that bitch put a little of everything in her special brew. A little tiger, a little leech, a little whatever. If there happened to be a stray dog raiding the garbage cans, she'd have wrung his neck and dumped him into the pot, too."
There was a moment of silence while they considered this. Then Remo sighed. "You're right. These killings aren't her style. That means it's one of her pups."
"Now I think we are on the same wavelength," Smith said, nodding. "We have to consider that's the source of this so-called monster."
Remo laughed hollowly. "What the hell else would we consider?"
THE OLD Asian was about to say something when Remo walked into the duplex. Maybe something derogatory. Maybe just a mild insult. Whatever it was, he swallowed it when he sensed Remo's smoldering self-recrimination.
Chiun, Master of Sinanju Emeritus, said simply, "My son?"
"Little Father." Remo paced the nearly empty living room.
A minute later he lowered himself to sit crosslegged on the mat, facing Chiun, and started again. "Little Father. I failed."
"How did you fail?" asked the little man in a singsong voice that held a deep compassion at rare times. Like now.
"Judith White. She's started killing again. Or one of her litters, anyway." He told Chiun all the details. "She got away from me in the end," Remo said. "If I would have stopped her then, this wouldn't be happening."
"But Emperor Smith and the young Prince believe this is not her," Chiun mused.
"They think it's probably connected to her. A bad batch of her potion that she threw out or forgot about or just didn't care about. A bunch of rabid Rin Tin Tins that slipped through the net. The way they're behaving, Smith thinks they might have even been operating for several months, maybe years."
"So how could you have known of their existence, let alone been responsible for their removal?" Chiun asked in a very straightforward way.
Remo sighed. "I don't know."
"You could not," Chiun summed up. "They may have been created before we last encountered Dr. Judith White at her water factory."
"That lets me off the hook? That just means it was my first kill-Judy failure rather than my second. Either way, I let her get away and now people are dying."
"There is no way you could have known she did not die in the fire. There was no way you could have foreseen her slippery escape in Maine."
"Aren't I supposed to be the freaking Master of Sinanju?"
"You are the Master of Sinanju. There is no 'freaking' and there is no 'supposed' about it. As the Master of Sinanju, you have skills beyond any possessed by other men. But this does not make you omniscient."
Remo frowned. "Omniscient means knowing everything?"
Chiun sighed heavily. "Yes."
"So you're trying to say I don't know everything?"
"Yes, as you've just demonstrated wondrously."
"So how come I feel like I let those people die?" Chiun didn't answer that. He could have harangued on the subject for a half hour if he wanted to. And he probably would. Later.
"Smitty and Junior aren't even convinced it's her or her kids," Remo said bitterly. "Get this. The FBI thinks maybe it's just some guy dressed up in a monster costume. You can buy them anywhere, mail order if you want to skip the stores. Full head and gloves, the feet, whatever. Smitty tried telling me the Feds might be right."
"And the other canine creatures?"
"The theory is they're attack-trained dogs," Remo said. "That's easy. You can train a dog to do almost anything. They had a German shepherd in L.A. a few years back, somebody trained him to snatch purses on the street. In Argentina, when Peron was still around, the state police had special handlers training dogs to rape their female prisoners."
"Trained dogs and monster masks do not explain human saliva in the wounds," Chiun said.
"Smith says maybe the guy's just a biter," Remo said. "I guess stranger things have happened. Look at Dahmer."
"What of the witness who survives?" asked Chiun.
"His name's Jean Cuvier. Some kind of secondstring lieutenant in the Cajun mob before the FBI grabbed Fortier. His specialty was fixing sporting events. He started yapping to the Feds and wound up with a contract on his head and asked the government to help him out. He squealed on the stand about Fortier's dabbling in extortion. He told the jury about Fortier acid-blinding a jockey who forgot he was supposed to lose a race. After the verdict, Cuvier was relocated to Nebraska. Omaha."