"The only riddle you're apt to solve watching those booze-bags is the 'tastes great, less filling' mystery," he said.
"Whatever I learn will be of greater interest to me than any of the interminable, pitiful excuses for your ingratitude you are likely to babble."
Remo closed his eyes. "Suit yourself," he sighed. He left Chiun in the car and headed for the side door of the main research building.
The same guard was on duty as had been the first day Remo arrived at BostonBio. He didn't even look at Remo's bogus Department of Agriculture ID, passing Remo through with a bored wave.
Remo took the elevator to the third floor, crossing the hall to the closed and unmarked door to the genetics labs.
The sound of rapid typing issued from inside the otherwise silent lab. With all that had gone on, Remo wasn't eager to give some poor lab assistant a heart attack by breaking down the door. He rapped sharply.
No answer. At least not directly.
The speed of the typing increased, as keyboard keys rattled furiously.
Frowning, Remo pressed two fingers on the door's surface. The lock popped and the door sprang open into the room.
Startled eyes jumped in his direction. A mane of raven-black hair whipped wildly around.
Remo was as surprised to see Judith White sitting behind her office desk as she was to see him. "Judith?" Remo called, stepping across the lab to her open office door.
She pointedly ignored him. Her fingers continued flying furiously across her keyboard.
At her door, Remo noted the faint smell of stale blood in the air. He glanced back to the corridor where the BBQs were caged. A yellow band of police tape hung across the closed door.
The blood smell didn't seem to be coming from that direction. He stepped around Judith's desk. "Shouldn't you be terrorizing the hospital staff right now?" Remo pressed.
The hand came out of nowhere. It thumped against his chest with shocking ferocity. Remo was thrown back against the office wall, crashing into an overflowing bookcase. Books and papers rained down on him.
It took his reeling mind a moment to register what had happened. Judith White had assaulted him. More incredible than anything, her blow had landed.
In Sinanju, breathing was everything. It was the thing from which all else flowed. And that single, awkward punch had forced the breath from him.
Lying on the floor, stunned, Remo pulled air deep into the pit of his stomach. It coursed through his body. Feeling some strength return, he rose to his feet, shaking off the bookshelf debris.
"You don't know when to stay down, brown eyes," Judith growled as he came toward her.
She was still typing madly away, confident that Remo posed no real threat. When he was within striking range, her hand lashed out again. It was the same move as before.
But this time, Remo was ready for it. He blocked the swinging hand with his wrist, deflecting it harmlessly. Pivoting on the ball of one foot, he launched a chopping hand at her temple. He intended only to knock her out. With Judith unconscious, he could take a step back. Figure out just what the hell was going on here.
All hope of a calm appraisal was shattered in the next instant.
A sharp-as-light pain in his shoulder. His hand still inches from her temple.
His own fault. He'd chalked up her first attack to blind luck. His overconfidence had allowed her to land another, more lethal blow. She had feinted with the right hand and attacked with the left.
Flesh ripped down to bone as fingernails tore from shoulder to chest. It was powerful, but not fatal. Almost too much force behind the blow. While her nails did lacerate the skin, the curled fist that followed the downward stroke pounded solidly into Remo's chest.
The force flung him back once more. Fortunately, Remo had centered himself this time. He didn't land as awkwardly as before, but his lungs still struggled for air as he struck the wall near the upended bookcase. Uncertain feet toppled a pile of medical texts.
Judith leaped into the breach left by Remo's moment of awkward hesitation. She flew to her feet, twisting in place. Grabbing at the base of her heavy leather office chair, she hauled the seat high above her head. With a deep, primordial scream that resounded off the pressboard office walls, Judith hurled the chair through the air.
It struck the blinds of her office window, rattling and bending them into knots of twisted tin. The blinds buckled out, and the chair crashed through the big window behind. Huge triangular shards of glass exploded out into the cool morning air. Judith followed immediately in the chair's wake. Bounding up into a squatting position on the office radiator, she flung herself through the rattling metal blinds. From his vantage point on the opposite side of the small office, Remo saw her dive out into open space. The twisted blinds clattered loudly back into place, obscuring his last view of the free-falling geneticist.
They were three stories up. Judith White had just committed certain suicide.
He forced her from his mind. At the moment, he had his own problems. He collapsed against the wall.
The raking blow had opened gouges several inches long across his shoulder and chest. His T-shirt was torn in four perfect parallel lines.
Although his body was already working to repair the damage, blood still oozed from the open gashes. Remo glanced around for something to staunch the flow.
He found a lump of cloth bunched up in the small office wastebasket. When Remo pulled it out, he found that it was already soaked in blood. Although the sticky liquid was mostly dry, some blood had pooled and clotted. It remained largely wet in the creases.
The source of the distinct blood odor he'd noticed when he first stuck his head in the office.
He recognized the articles of clothing as some of the blood-soaked outfit Judith had worn to the hospital last night. There was even a blue-speckled gray johnny thrown in the trash. The hospital gown-like the rest of the clothing-was smeared with blood.
She had been wearing a new outfit just now. Judith must have kept a change of clothes in her office. Remo dropped the clothes back in the barrel. Everything was becoming clearer to him. He was angry at himself for dismissing her as a drug-besotted academic. It was obvious now who was behind the slayings.
One hand held tightly over his wounds, Remo went out into the lab. He found a few sheets of sterilized cotton in a cabinet. Remo pushed one of these up underneath his shirt, pressing it into the injured area. Something jabbed painfully into his shoulder at two distinct points.
Reaching inside the first of the bloody gashes, Remo was surprised to find something embedded there. He pulled the object loose.
Between his fingers was the thin sliver of an artificial fingernail, identical to the one he'd pulled out of Billy Pierce's body. He found one more in one of the other wounds.
And like a flash, Remo suddenly remembered the violence and speed of the murders of Pierce and the other HETA members back in the Concord field. If Judith had strength and speed, it was possible...
Alarm. Hand holding gauze, Remo raced back to the office window, shoving the blinds roughly aside. The sight below turned his stomach to water. The office chair had survived the fall. It lay on its side on the damp green lawn. Around it, hundreds of shards of shattered glass were spread wide across the grass. That was it. There was no sign of Judith White.
"Damn!" Remo growled.
He couldn't risk scaling the wall. Not with a halfshredded shoulder. Cursing at himself for assuming the three-story drop would have killed her, Remo flew back through the lab, racing downstairs.
He exploded out into the parking lot.
The car he'd parked next to was gone. In a wave of self-recrimination, he realized why it had looked familiar to him. It was the same vehicle he had seen parked near his own on the lonely road near the cornfield.
The same car he had seen driving slowly away after the attack against the HETA people.
The same one in which Judith White had carted the first BBQ back to BostonBio.
As he ran over to his own vehicle, Remo realized why the second set of tracks he'd discovered had ended so abruptly in the alley behind HETA headquarters. After killing Curt Tulle and Sadie Mayer, Judith had hauled the BBQ out to her waiting car, loaded it in and then climbed behind the wheel.
End of tracks.