"I know," Remo said.
"…in all manners possible."
Remo gave Smith an I've-heard-it-all-before look and said, "I know, Chiun."
"They have all been made holy in our eyes."
"Chiun—"
"They are the hope of the future…."
"Chiun—"
"You cannot kill hope. It is unthinkable. It is against the laws of Sinanju."
Remo gave up and said to Smith, "Do you have our tickets?"
"Yes," Smith said. "You're on a flight to Detroit tonight." He handed Remo the tickets.
"No matter what the child did, no one had the right to kill him."
"We know, Chiun, we know," Remo said, getting to his feet. "Come on, we have some packing to do."
"It is unthinkable," Chiun said, standing up. "It is our responsibility to find out who is committing this most despicable of crimes."
"I agree, Chiun," Remo said. "It's our responsibility."
"Good luck," Smith said.
"We will not need luck," Chiun assured him. "This is something that must be done, and it will be done. I so swear."
And with that Chiun strode purposefully from the room. Remo shrugged at Smith and said, "He'll walk all the way to Detroit if I don't stop him. We'll keep in touch."
CHAPTER THREE
Remo and Chiun stopped at their hotel just long enough to drop off their luggage and then proceeded immediately to a car rental agency. They did not go to the number-one company but to one of the others because Chiun always said that he had respect for anyone who was constantly trying harder.
Remo would have liked to take a few moments to breathe, but it was Chiun who pushed him to rent a car hurriedly so that they could drive over to the police station where Billy Martin had been arrested and bailed out.
"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."
"Hell, it's no skin off my nose," Palmer said. "Here." He wrote something on a pad, ripped off the top sheet, and handed it to Remo.
"That's the guy. A loser. I still wonder where he got the money from."
Remo took the slip of paper and said, "If I find out, I'll let you know."
"Yeah, you do that," Palmer said. "You do that."
Chiun was quiet during the ride to the lawyer's office, which made his pupil suspicious. "This is the place," Remo said, pulling up in front of the address Palmer had given him. "Weems. Harvey Weems. Sounds like someone who should be related to old Elmo Wimpler, remember, Chiun?"
Chiun maintained a stony-faced silence, indicating to Remo that something was definitely going on inside his head.
"Well, let's go and pay him a visit," he said, getting out of the car. Studying the building, he added, "Can't be the world's most successful lawyer, not if he's got his office in this dump."
"You assume," Chiun said, and they'd been all through that before too.
"I'm sorry, Little Father," Remo said. "I should not assume that a pig is a pig simply because it lives in a pigsty."
Chiun declined to comment, which was just fine with Remo. He was hoping they'd find this "child killer" quickly just so Chiun would get off his soapbox.