"These child killers must not be allowed to roam the streets any longer than is absolutely necessary," was the way he put it.
"I know how you feel—" Remo started, but Chiun took exception to the remark and made a disgusted noise, cutting his student off.
"Of course you do not know how I feel. You have never seen a child drowned because of famine, as I have. You have never known the sorrow of Sinanju—"
"All right, Chiun," Remo said, "all right." He'd been forced to listen to Chiun's pontification on the same subject on the plane all the way to Detroit. "You're right, I don't know how you feel, I admit it, but I just can't seem to get all worked up over the murder of some little snot who killed his own parents."
Chiun gave Remo a withering stare and said, "I cannot find the proper words to describe how I feel toward you at this moment."
"I'm sure you'll come up with something."
"To think that I have struggled all these years to impart to you the knowledge of a master of Sinanju, and you cannot even respond to the murder of a child."
"Listen, Chiun," Remo said from behind the wheel of the car, "I cried when Old Yeller died, really I did—"
"Old who?"
"It was a dog in a movie I saw when I was a kid—"
"You liken the death of a child to the death of a… an animal? A dog?"
Remo decided that he had better keep his mouth shut because when he did open it, he was just making things worse.
He continued to drive, trying to block out the sound of Chiun's recriminations, a tall order, even for him. The old Oriental had not run out of them by the time they reached the police station, but he apparently decided to save what he had left until after they got the information they were after.
It took them a little while to locate the detective who had arrested Billy Martin. When they did, he wasn't all that anxious to talk to them.
"What's your interest?" Detective William Palmer asked, frowning at Chiun as if he couldn't figure him out.
"We detest child killers," Chiun said.
"Oh, yeah?" Palmer said. "How do you feel about someone who would kill his own parents while they were asleep?"
"Was that proven?" Remo asked.
"If you know anything about this case, you know that it never was, but it would have been if we had been able to get him to court. It's better this way, though."
"Why?" Chiun asked.
"Because somebody saved the city a lot of money by killing the little bastard, and I'm all for that."
Remo stepped in before Chiun could reduce the detective to something less attractive than he already was.
"My friend just doesn't like to see any child killed," he explained.
"Child? Billy Martin wasn't a child," Palmer said, screwing up his already ugly face. It was a mass of bumps and creases that successfully disguised his age, which could have been anywhere between thirty and sixty. "This was a snot-nosed little bastard with absolutely no regard for human life. He got what he deserved." He looked directly at Chiun and added, "You can tell your friend that."
The detective turned and walked to the rear of the squad room, apparently finished talking with them, but Remo wasn't finished with him.
"Chiun, wait for me here so I'll have a chance to get something useful out of him."
Chiun snorted and studied the ceiling while Remo headed for the detective's desk.
Palmer was already engrossed in paperwork when Remo approached him, but he looked up when Remo's shadow fell on his desk. "What's with your Chinese friend?" he asked. "Is he some kind of bleeding heart?"
"He's not Chinese, he's Korean."
Palmer shrugged and said, "Same thing."
"Don't let him hear you say that," Remo warned. "He's even more sensitive about that than he is about child killing."
Palmer looked past Remo at Chiun and said, "What the hell could he do?"
"Let's not go into that now. I want to talk a little more about the Martin kid."
Palmer sighed heavily and then said, "All right. I'll tell you another reason why I'm glad somebody chopped him up into little pieces."
"Please do."
"He was gonna get off."
"You're assuming he was guilty."
"Hell, man, I know he was guilty. He didn't make any secret of it."
"He confessed?"
"Not formally, but he didn't do much to deny it, either."
"Then why was he going to get off?"
"He was going to buy his way off by giving some information on something big he said was going down."
"What?"
Palmer shrugged and said, "He never got to it, but he claimed it was really big."
"Any guesses?"
"I don't deal in guesses, mister," the detective said, "I've got too many facts to juggle."
"I guess you do. Can you tell who the lawyer was that bailed him out?"
"What are you, a private dick or something?"
"Something."