What had he meant, "Inside, too"? Remo stood up and looked into the bedroom. He found Cicely. There was no need to check to see if she were dead. There weren't any pieces big enough to sustain life.
Remo understood now why the men were outside. They wanted to film him and LaRue and the woman. They were going to blame her death on Tulsa Torrent, perhaps use it all to kick off a riot that could sweep like a flood through the Tulsa Torrent land and destroy the copa-ibas.
Remo was angry. He had liked LaRue.
He lifted LaRue in his arms and brought him back to the trapdoor he had cut in the kitchen floor. Gently, as if the man were still alive, he lowered him down to the ground.
Then he went back to get LaRue's axe. He dropped it, too, through the opening. For a moment, he considered disposing also of Cicely's butchered body, but decided it was too messy. He let himself back down through the kitchen floor, then pulled the plywood and tile back into place from below. He bent up the ripped steel panel.
He had the feeling that he was forgetting something, something he should check. It gnawed at him, but he shrugged it off and scrambled to the end of the trailer, pulling Pierre LaRue's body after him.
Once he got out from under the structure, he hoisted Pierre LaRue into his arms, grabbed the double-faced axe in his right hand, and moved off silently into the safe darkness of the trees.
As he walked back through the woods toward Alpha Camp, Remo could feel Pierre's body growing cold in his arms. Remo stopped on the hill overlooking the valley of copa-iba trees. The heat from the generators and blowers moved up around them, along with the scent of gasoline and the noise of motors. Remo shook his head. Was it all worth it? Were these trees worth so many lives? Were they worth the life of this big, glorious, happy Frenchman he carried in his arms?
Gently, Remo lay Pierre down in the snow, and with his hands he covered over the man's body. There would be time for burying later, and this would be the spot, among the trees that LaRue loved. Dragging the big woodsman's axe behind him, Remo went back to the log cabin. When he reached Alpha Camp, he drew his arm back and angrily slung the axe, end over end, across the clearing. The blade hit clean and buried itself three inches deep into the trunk of a ponderosa pine.
Chiun was still sitting where Remo had left him.
He looked up as Remo came in. "I am glad you are here," he said. "Should I call this chapter 'Chiun Saves the Barbarians' or 'Chiun Saves Everybody'?"
"Who the hell cares?" Remo said.
"That is a stupid title," Chiun said.
But Remo wasn't listening. He was on the telephone, dialing Smith. It was after midnight on the East Coast, but Remo knew that did not matter. When Remo was off on an assignment, Smith could almost always be found in his office.
He was there now.
"Don't you ever sleep?" Remo asked.
"How is that relevant?" Smith asked.
"Never mind," Remo said. Quickly, he filled him in on the death of Pierre LaRue and Mrs. Winston-Alright.
"Did he kill her?" Smith asked.
"I don't think so. I think somebody else did, then bushwhacked him; and was trying to wrap the frame all in a neat package by getting pictures of me, too."
"That might be," Smith agreed. "What did he mean 'A rat did this'?"
"I don't know. Have you found out anything about the dead men? The tape recorder? The Mountain Highs?"
"That is why I'm waiting here," Smith said. "The computer has not yet finished scanning its memories."
"Swell," Remo growled. "People are getting swatted around here like flies, and we're waiting for some big goddamn machine to finish scanning its memories."
"I will call as soon as I have anything," Smith said blandly.
Remo slammed the phone down onto the base. He looked to Chiun, but before he could speak, the telephone rang.
"What now?" he growled into the mouthpiece, thinking it was Smith calling back.
It was Roger Stacy.
"What the hell is going on?" Stacy demanded.
"What are you talking about?" Remo said.
"I've just heard that those Mountain High lunatics are massing down at their camp. They're screaming murder and protests and who knows what else. You murder somebody?"
"Not yet," Remo said coldly. "Stacy, I want you to send some guards down here."
"What for?"
"To guard Joey. I'm going to be out."
"All right. They're on their way. But listen, O'Sylvan ..."
"What?"
"Don't cause any trouble."
By the time Remo and Chiun reached the encampment of the Mountain High Society, carnival time had begun. The night before, the society had had only a hundred demonstrators in its candlelight march, but already, more than five hundred people had swelled the small camping ground. With them came a full complement of entertainers, souvenir vendors, and instant health-food snack bars set up by local impresarios who knew nut cases when they saw them.
As Remo and Chiun moved through the crowd, Chiun was besieged by pimply-faced sixteen-year-olds and face-lifted thirty-eight-year-olds looking for guidance and wisdom. He told each in Korean that they were lower than snake droppings. Each accepted this bit of Oriental wisdom and went off enriched.
Remo was listening to snatches of conversation. Something big was supposed to happen. Something big was going to be announced.
"What's happening?" Remo asked a young woman whose shirt proclaimed that she liked dogs better than men, apparently having sampled both.
"The fascists have gone too far this time," she said.
"What's that mean?" Remo asked her.
"I don't know. That's what I was told," she said.
Remo moved off. He heard other rumors. That the police were going to arrest all the demonstrators; that Tulsa Torrent goon squads were going to use tear gas, mace, and nerve gas against the demonstrators just to protect their filthy profits. Both these rumors were generally believed. A third was offered up as just a rumor, probably groundless. According to this least believable rumor, one of the leaders of the Mountain High Society had been hacked to pieces by a Tulsa Torrent lumberjack.
A makeshift stage had been set up. A trio of superannuated, beatnik folk singers who had never been known to miss a paying date climbed onto the stage and began running through a catalog of their greatest hits from twenty years before. The crowd began pressing forward. Remo and Chiun moved along with them.
After the crowd had been warmed up, Ararat Carpathian came onto the bandstand. Remo recognized him as Cicely Winston-Alright's aide-de-camp and heard the people around him call the curly-haired man's name. "Ari. Ari. Ari." Then he heard others yell "A rat. A rat. A rat."
"What are they yelling?" he asked a nearly hoarse young woman who was screaming the name with almost religious fervor.
"Arat," she said.
"That's not a nice thing to call him," Remo said.
"That's his name. Ararat Carpathian. He's Mrs. Winston-Alright's right-hand man. We call him Arat."
"Oh," said Remo, remembering Pierre LaRue's last words. "Thank you."
"That's okay," the woman said. "Anyone ever tell you you've got nifty dark eyes?"
"No," Remo said. "You're the very first."
"That's him," Remo told Chiun. "He's the one who killed LaRue." He muttered to himself: "A rat. A rat."
Carpathian had raised his arms for quiet and the crowd followed his lead.
"Friends," he yelled into a microphone. "I have bad news."
There was a groan from the audience.
"Our leader, the beloved Cicely Winston-Alright, is dead."
There were screams of anguish from the crowd, sobs, shouts of disbelief.
"This loving woman, who so loved us and so loved the good earth, was struck down in the prime of her life by a murderer most vicious and foul," Carpathian bellowed.