Standing over the body, Chiun peered down at the hollowed stomach cavity. His face betrayed no emotion.
"This is the work of an animal," the Korean pronounced.
"That's what everyone's saying." Remo nodded. Chiun tipped his head, considering. It was clear something weighed on his mind.
"Care to let the rest of the Scooby Gang in on whatever's got your spider senses tingling?" Remo asked.
Chiun gave him a withering look. "Will there ever come a time when you shut your mouth and open your eyes?"
Remo frowned deeply. "That like one of those 'Do you plan to stop beating your wife?' questions?"
"Pah!" Chiun exclaimed. He spun on an impatient heel, heading back to the corridor.
Remo had to jog to catch up to the swirl of dancing silk. He found the Master of Sinanju standing before the two caged animals. Remo noted that the latches on the cage doors were secure.
"Do you still not see?" Chiun pressed.
"You mean how do they let themselves out, kill and then get back in?" he ventured.
"Are you so blind?" Chiun asked brusquely. "Where is the blood?"
Remo looked around. He looked down the corridor to where they'd found the body. Finally, he looked back to Chiun. His expression was sheepish. "What blood?" he asked.
The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes, as if too weary to display real anger.
"If these animals are responsible for this death, then why are they not flecked with blood?"
Remo looked more closely at the nearest BBQ. Its pale skin was as clean as a whistle. So was the other animal's skin. There were no darker patches on their black spots.
"Maybe they licked it off," Remo suggested.
"They could not clean away the scent of so fresh a kill from their breath," Chiun pointed out.
The Master of Sinanju squatted down before one of the BBQs, hazel eyes intent. The odd-looking animal stared blankly back at him.
"These things are genetically engineered," Remo offered. "Maybe they absorb smells like a box of baking soda in the fridge."
"I know of this 'genetical,'" Chiun said. "It is the name applied to inferior breakfast cereals that masquerade as a famous product. Beyond that, these creatures are guilty of nothing more than being completely adorable."
Remo blinked blandly. "Come again?" he asked.
When Chiun looked up at him, his face was beaming. "Surely you must agree they are as cute as buttons."
"Only if we're talking really ugly buttons."
"Hush, Remo," Chiun admonished. "It will hear you." Sticking his bony arms between the bars of the cage, he pressed his hands against the animal's triangular ears. "Pay him no heed," the Master of Sinanju cooed.
The BBQ moaned softly. Chiun squealed in delight.
"I hate to break up this Kodak moment, Marlin Perkins, but we've still got a hollowed-out scientist in the pantry."
Chiun's expression dismissed this as irrelevant. "Do you think Smith would allow me to take one of these marvelous creatures back to Sinanju?" he asked.
"Does the phrase 'no way in hell' mean anything to you?"
"I will assure him that I will feed it and walk it every day," the old man said, not listening. Chiun patted the BBQ on its long snout, his expression wistful. "Did you know, Remo, that Master Na-Kup is still heralded in the scrolls of Sinanju for bringing a camel back to my village? It was a gift from a lesser pharaoh. He called it a Mountain Beast for the shape of its hump. All the village gathered around to see it. The people were quite impressed."
"They were probably cranking its tail to see which way the money came out," Remo said. He didn't like where this was heading.
"Na-Kup did nothing more to distinguish himself as Master but lug one mangy camel back from Egypt. Yet here it is three thousand years later, and he is still known to all as Na-Kup the Discoverer. Surely I would be remembered even more fondly in years to come were I to return bearing something more exotic on my proud shoulders."
"I'll buy you a cockatoo," Remo said dryly.
"Master Cho-Lin already discovered those lice-ridden buzzards centuries ago." Chiun scowled. "Or do you not remember the fifteen hundred lines in the scrolls devoted to Cho-Lin and his Speaking Bird?"
"Sounds like a bad Vegas act," Remo commented.
When Chiun raised baleful eyes to Remo, they widened in surprise. He was looking beyond his pupil.
In the infinitely short space of time that Chiun noticed Dr. Judith White, Remo became aware of her, as well. Her step was so soft, her heartbeat so low, she was at the mouth of the corridor before either of them was aware of her.
Near the BBQ pen, the Master of Sinanju stood rapidly. The lines of his face bunched into knots of ominous tight wrinkles.
"Judith?" Remo queried, alarmed.
She was framed in the doorway to the main lab. Judith White was awash in blood. Her lab coat and the front of her form-hugging dress were streaked with crimson.
"Remo?" she asked, her throaty voice oddly hesitant and distant. She reached out a hand to him. All at once, Judith's eyes rolled back in her head. Legs buckled. Without another word, she collapsed to the cold lab floor. Fainted dead away.
Chapter 17
"Are you certain Judith White was not responsible?" the lemony voice of Harold W. Smith pressed. Remo was on one of the lab phones. The ambulance carrying the near comatose BostonBio geneticist had left for Boston's St. Eligius Hospital five minutes before.
"What kind of dippy question is that?" Remo asked.
"You just told me she was still on drugs," Smith stressed.
While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, Remo and Chiun had done some snooping around. They'd found the black box with its vials and syringes in Judith's office.
"Drugs don't turn you cannibal, Smitty," Remo said.
"No, but perhaps she was acting in a drug-induced rage."
"Doesn't wash. This guy wasn't just killed. His insides were gone. My money's still on the BBQs." A harrumph sounded across the room.
The Master of Sinanju sat, cross-legged on the floor. Beside him one of the BBQs stood tethered to a desk leg. Chiun was nose to nose with the creature. "You did say she was covered with blood, yet did not appear physically injured in any way."
"Probably fell over the body and then stumbled around in shock afterward," Remo suggested.
"If Judith White were to blame, it would explain the artificial nail you found in the body in Concord."
Smith had mentioned the Smithsonian's conclusion.
"I'll check out her hands next time I see her," Remo promised. "If we ever see her alive again."
"Why? Is there a danger to Dr. White?"
"I don't know," Remo admitted. "Depends on what kind of junk she was pumping into herself. It seemed like she'd doubled the dose after finding the body. Her heart rate was down to next to nothing. Even Sinanju can't hear someone's heart when it's between beats. According to the guards around here, she wasn't skulking around the building anywhere, so she was probably in her office the whole time."
"And no one else was in the lab?" Smith questioned.
"Just her and the BBQs."
"BBQs? Remo, you told me yesterday BostonBio had only one of the creatures back in its possession."
"As of tonight, it's two. I'm guessing it's the one from HETA headquarters. These are homing monsters, Smitty."
"This is puzzling," Smith mused. "If you feel Dr. White is not responsible for the most recent death, then we are left with only the animals themselves as suspects."
"Don't forget HETA," Remo suggested. "But they couldn't have gotten in here without the guards seeing them."
The thought occurred to both men simultaneously. "The window," Remo said, remembering the avenue HETA had used to first gain entry to the lab. "See if it has been repaired," Smith instructed.
"I'm on it. Hold the phone, Smitty." Remo placed the receiver on the desk and hurried into the connecting hallway.