Chapter 24
Two more bodies turned up over the next two days. One in Waltham, west of Boston, the other in Lexington.
By this point, it was no longer a mystery who was really to blame for the previous victims. The BBQs were exonerated. The police were now searching for Dr. Judith White.
BostonBio's history was exhumed and dissected by a slavering press. BGSBS might have been a different corporate entity, but the genetics firm was up to the same horrid business as its predecessor.
State, federal and local agencies, along with families of Judith White's victims, filed lawsuits against BostonBio. The company's stock plummeted. Because of the dreadful events swirling around the now discredited BBQ project, BostonBio had taken a giant leap toward bankruptcy.
And through all of the tumult and acrimonious public debate, Judith White continued to elude authorities.
Day had bled into night once more, and in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, a weary Harold Smith fruitlessly scanned the latest news digests as they came in.
The CURE director was bone tired. The only sleep he'd gotten in the past forty-eight hours came during unplanned catnaps. The only real relief from the tedium had been a single trip home earlier that day for a shower and a change of clothes.
His suit jacket was draped over the back of his chair. Bleary eyes studied his submerged monitor. Smith was helpless to act. All of the sophisticated technology at his fingertips could not be employed to track something that operated on instinct. If Judith White continued on her current course of behavior, he had as much of a chance of finding her as he had of tracking a wild bird in flight.
That Dr. White had carried through on Sheila Feinberg's original experiments was no longer in question. After he had hung up from Remo, Smith had surreptitiously ordered agents from Boston's FBI office into BostonBio. Computer experts for the federal agency had collected all available evidence from Judith White's office.
There hadn't been much left.
She had magnetized the floppy disks Remo had found on the floor. It would take weeks to piece together the small scraps of information that had not been destroyed utterly. But it turned out the disks offered a painstaking piece of electronic detective work that, in the end, was unnecessary. Unbeknownst to Dr. White, they had gotten most of what they needed without the floppies.
Although the files in her computer itself had been largely erased, she had failed to destroy her hard drive. The genius of BostonBio's top scientist apparently didn't extend to computers. All she would have had to do to wreck the internal system of the device would have been to engage the drive and then-while it was running--drop the whole machine on the floor. Her failure to do so had given Smith the information he needed. And did not want to hear. Many of the files she had tried to erase had already been undeleted. The story as it unfolded was horrific.
Judith White had made a deliberate effort to discover the old BGSBS files that dealt with the Feinberg Method. She had taken the original formula and had improved greatly on it. According to one of the nation's leading geneticists, who had been called in as a consultant by the FBI, Judith White had piled layers of genetic material from more than a dozen species onto her own DNA.
If her notes were any indication, she had started primarily with tiger genes, so they held the most powerful influence on this new creature. But she hadn't been satisfied to stop there. Other genetic material was thrown into the DNA cocktail at later dates. And this abomination was skulking with impunity around the streets and backyards of Massachusetts.
The thought chilled Smith.
There had been nothing new since the last body, which had been discovered more than fourteen hours ago.
According to the earlier body count, the creature that Judith White had become fed frequently. But that number had dwindled. The seemingly low death toll of the past two days likely meant that she was somehow disposing of the newest bodies in order to avoid capture.
Waltham and Lexington. One body in each town. There was nothing to go on from there. Smith couldn't hope to establish any kind of pattern with only two corpses.
Smith felt ghoulish thinking that more bodies would help the search. But it was a gruesome fact. More would steer a course directly to her. An arrow painted in blood across a map of eastern Massachusetts would point the way.
It was a horrible thought. Even so, it wasn't one the CURE director could easily dismiss.
Judith White represented a threat to mankind. Perhaps one more dangerous than the species Homo sapiens had ever before encountered.
A thinking animal. A threat in and of itself. But if Dr. White had only the physical characteristics of an ordinary animal, she could still be avoided or captured.
She did not. Unlike the rest of the lesser creatures in the animal kingdom, she possessed the perfect camouflage. A vicious remorseless killer wrapped in a human face.
Judith White could blend in with humanity. Disappear.
Until it was time to feed.
And if the Feinberg incident was anything by which to judge this new case, Judith White would want more than mere survival. Like all animals, she would want her species to thrive. She would want to create more of her own kind.
Weary from lack of sleep, Smith pulled up a file on his computer. It was a file that he had read and reread many times over the past twenty-four hours.
He had used the available time since Judith White's disappearance to order an autopsy on one of the two BBQs that had been returned to BostonBio. Smith had found the preliminary results disturbing, to say the least.
It was a matter of fact; Judith White would want more than mere survival. Much more. She wouldn't rest until her species dominated the world. And one of the two men who represented the last, best hope for humanity had already fallen victim to her.
In a phone conversation earlier in the evening, Chiun had assured the CURE director that Remo's physical wounds were healing. But there were deeper cuts than these. The topic of Remo's potential psychological wounds was left undiscussed by both Smith and the Master of Sinanju.
Smith turned abruptly away from his desk-away from the technology that had failed him. He spun to the picture window. As he stared out across the endless black waters of Long Island Sound, he saw no lights above the waves. Only the blackness of eternity-Mankind was alone.
And in the claustrophobic darkness of his lonely, spartan office, Harold W. Smith prayed that Remo was up to the challenge that lay ahead. For humanity's sake.
Chapter 25
"I feel fine," Remo groused, for what seemed like the millionth time in the past forty-eight hours. "You look pale," Chiun told him.
"I'm not sick," Remo insisted.
"I was commenting on the ghostly pigmentation natural to white skin, and not on your state of health," the Master of Sinanju droned. "Honestly, Remo, I did not notice until the last two days how amazingly white you are. Is it possible you are the whitest white man on Earth?"
"Last I checked, it was still Pat Boone," Remo grumbled.
The insults had started dribbling out slowly that morning. By noon, they were a flood.
At first, he had welcomed the normalcy. For Chiun to stop doting and start insulting proved that Remo was well on the road to full recovery. But that was hours ago. Right around now, the Master of Sinanju's abuse was beginning to grate on him.
As they drove slowly through the streets of Lexington, Remo tried to ignore the tenderness in his shoulder. His Sinanju-trained body healed much faster than that of a normal man, but the wounds Judith White inflicted had been deep.
When they returned home after leaving BostonBio two days before, Chiun had stripped the cotton gauze away from Remo's lacerations. For the first time, Remo noticed the white bone of his clavicle peeking out through the deepest center gouges. The bone was coated with a watery pink film.
The dressing Chiun had applied to the brutal gashes smelled worse than a used diaper, but had obviously done the trick.
Flexing the muscle, Remo felt a tightness to his skin around the area where Judith's claws had raked. The tightness became more noticeable every time he turned the steering wheel on their aimless ride through the dark streets of Lexington.
Beside Remo, the Master of Sinanju gazed into the dull yellow glow cast by a streetlamp. Insects that did not yet know summer was over fluttered lazily around the light.
"What are we doing?" Chiun queried abruptly. Remo was staring at the shadows beyond the windshield. "Twenty, twenty-five," he replied absently.
Chiun turned from the window, allowing the streetlight to slip into their wake. "I was not asking our speed," he said with bland irritation.
His tone shook Remo from his thoughts. He glanced at Chiun. "You know what we're doing," he said tightly.
"Pretend I do not."