"Ah." Chiun nodded. The ensuing silence lasted but a moment. "Her who?"
"Judith White, " Remo snapped. "We're looking for Judith White, okay? Jeez." The tension made his shoulder ache.
"I see," Chiun said, as if finally realizing the point of their quest. "Forgive me for pressing, Remo, but I thought briefly that you might be on yet another futile search for your dream female. You can understand why I would not want to be in this vehicle while you violate local harlotry ordinances." Alert eyes locked on empty shadows. "What makes you believe this creature is nearby?"
"Smith said the last body turned up here. Some college kid going to work this morning."
"But did not Smith also say the previous victim of this iniquitous thing was found miles from here?" "Waltham." Remo nodded. "It's the next town over."
"Then why are we looking here and not there? Or for that matter, in another hamlet altogether?"
"I don't know," Remo replied, gripping the wheel in frustration. "But it beats sitting around doing nothing."
"You are sitting now," Chiun pointed out. When he turned to the Master of Sinanju, the shadows cast on Remo's cruel face were ominous.
"If you want to go home, I can flag down the next cab," he warned.
In his kimono sleeves, Chiun's hands sought opposing wrists. His tone softened. "You know as well as I, my son, that this creature will not spring from the night to chase after your automobile like an angry dog. It is clever. It will bide its time until it thinks that it is safe."
"And in the meantime, more people die. No way," Remo said firmly. "I'm not going to have that on my conscience."
Chiun examined Remo's dimly lit profile. The younger Master of Sinanju's face was resolute. "If there is ever a prize for self-flagellation, you will surely win it, Remo Williams," the old man muttered.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"You feel that because of your encounter with the other tiger creature years ago that you alone should have seen what others did not."
"Shouldn't I have?" Remo demanded, frown lines deepening around his tense jaw. "I got more up close and personal with Sheila Feinberg than anyone. Of all people in the world, I should have seen what Judith White was."
They drove down Bedford Street, taking a left onto Burlington.
Chiun's parchment face was serious. "Do not let the memory of another dark time cloud your present judgment, Remo," he said quietly. "You are not what you were back then. Then you were but a child in Sinanju. Now you are Apprentice Reigning Master, destined to succeed Chiun the Great Teacher." Hazel eyes sparked with a father's pride.
Remo smiled wanly. "She ripped me up pretty good, Little Father," he said softly. "Just like the last time."
Chiun shook his head. Wisps of cotton-candy hair became angry thunderclouds. "For this thing we seek, there was no last time," he spit. "It is a new mongrel creation."
Remo couldn't let it go. He flexed his shoulder. "Sure feels like old times," he mumbled.
Chiun's folded arms dug deeper into his sleeves. "I do not know why I waste my breath," the old man hissed. "If you cannot snap out of this for your own sake, do it for me. I am far too old to train another pupil. Our village will suffer if you waltz off to an encounter with this thing and get yourself killed."
"You're all heart."
"And stomach and liver and kidneys. And I intend to keep them all where they are. Take care that you do the same." He settled into perturbed silence.
Across the front seat from the Master of Sinanju, Remo bit the inside of his cheek in concentration. Logically, he knew Chiun was right. But logic had no place in what he was now feeling. A small, tweaking pang of unaccustomed fear tugged at his belly. And in that fear, Remo knew, there nestled the possibility of failure. Even for an Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju.
They spent the rest of that night wordlessly prowling the empty streets.
Chapter 26
Ted Holstein was a hunter who had never once fired his shotgun at a living thing.
"Unless you count trees," he'd once complained to his next-door neighbor. "Or shrubs. Wind takes hold of a-what's that one called?"
"A rhododendron," his neighbor replied tightly.
"Yeah, rotordentine. Anyway, wind grabs one of those suckers and you look at it the wrong way? Man, you'd swear those branch things were antlers. Know what I mean?"
"You shot my shrub," his irate neighbor pressed. He held two large branches in his hands, severed by a blast from Ted's bedroom window. The rest of the plant was scattered across his neighbor's front yard.
"Yeah. Gee. I did, didn't I?" Ted was standing in his pajamas near the fence that separated their properties. Weaving, he glanced down at the smoking shotgun in his hand. He glanced back up, suddenly inspired. "Hey, you want a beer?"
If hunting was Ted's avocation, drinking was his vocation. He was one of the lucky few people for whom work and hobby melded seamlessly.
Ted had been drinking since he was sixteen and hunting since his seventeenth birthday. Since the drinking had come first, he had worked it so that he couldn't clearly remember a single hunting trip.
As a result of his excessive tippling, aside from some unfortunate flora, Ted had never shot anything living.
Birds could have landed on his shotgun barrel without fear. Bunnies and squirrels pranced through his backyard and dreams with impunity.
He had bagged a deer once. Driving home drunk from an annual family Fourth of July party, he'd inadvertently taken the scenic route. Weaving through the woods, Ted managed to plow smack into an eight-point buck.
Unfortunately, since it was the off season, Ted couldn't mount his prize to the crumpled hood and drive back and forth through town. Instead, he rolled the huge animal down a nearby ravine, covered it with pine needles and took off in his smoking Chevy pickup before some nosy game warden slapped him with a fine.
That was ten years ago and it was beginning to look like the last chance he'd ever have of bagging something big. At least, until two nights ago.
Alone in his dingy living room, Ted flipped on the TV. He'd hoped to see the sports segment on the late news. Instead, he was dropped smack into the midst of the hysterical, wall-to-wall local coverage of the rampaging BostonBio killer BBQs.
From what he could glean from the news, there was some kind of vicious monster loose in Boston. Police were looking the other way as thousands of hunters descended on the city, hoping to bag the trophy of a lifetime.
In his boozy haze, Ted Holstein had decided right then and there that this prize and all its attendant glory would be his.
Pawing through his mountain of empty beer cans, he'd found his phone. He and his two closest drinking buddies soon settled on a simple plan. The three of them loaded up on beer and shotgun shells. As fast as Ted's battered truck would take them, they set off for Boston.
It was only a day into their expedition and the rules of the game had already changed. Their target was no longer the BBQs, but a female scientist named Dr. Judith White. The grainy black-and-white Boston Blade BBQ photograph that Ted had fastened to the dashboard with masking tape had been replaced by an equally grainy picture of Dr. White. The stunning good looks of the BostonBio geneticist stared out at him as he drove up Route 117 in Concord.
"What are we doing here?" asked Evan Cleaver, one of the other two men crammed in the cab of Ted's truck.
"We're looking for her, stupid," Ted said, tapping a finger against Judith White's reproduced face. The man between them belched. His bleary eyes were at half-mast as he looked out at the cornfields that lined the road.
"This Boston?" he grumbled. Ted had known Bob for fifteen years and only had a vague memory of his surname. The ability to remember such trivialities as the last names of good friends had been lost a decade's worth of Coors ago.
"Bob's up," Evan commented.
"Not for long," Bob slurred. He rummaged around in the cooler wedged at their feet. The ice had long since melted. The can he extracted was dripping wet. Bob popped the top on his warm beer and began sucking greedily at the can.