Wolf's Bane td-132 Read online

  "Third photo," Smith said. It showed what could have been a shattered mannequin, except for all the blood and scattered viscera. The setting seemed to be a lawn or grassy field.

  "That's Wyatt Greaves," Smith said. "He was a neighbor, more or less, no evidence of any personal connection to the witness. Greaves apparently liked late-night jogging. The police surmise that he heard something as he passed by Pascoe's house, or maybe he just met the killer coming out. In any case, it was bad timing."

  "Bad is right."

  "The last three shots," Smith said, "show Aloysius Cartier, his wife and their three children. Cartier ran chop shops for the Cajun mob and worked his way up into middle management. The FBI caught him red-handed with some stolen property and squeezed until he sang. The family was relocated to Cadillac, Michigan, with the surname of Francisco. They were safe, from all appearances, until three days ago."

  Now they were safe again, thought Remo, as only the dead were ever truly safe from harm. But Jesus, what a way to go. The man and woman tangled up in bloody sheets, another bedroom transformed into a mad surgeon's operating theater. The children...

  "What's the weapon?" Remo asked. "Machete? Ax? A chain saw?"

  "Teeth," said Dr. Smith.

  Remo Williams said nothing for a long moment. Then he said, "I see."

  He did see. He saw it as big as death.

  Smith didn't typically involve CURE in something as mundane as organized-crime murders. Now Remo knew why Smith was involving them this time. "Goddamn it!" he growled.

  "Autopsy reports on all nine victims are consistent," Smith continued relentlessly. "Medical examiners from three states have confirmed their findings with the FBI in Washington. It would appear the victims were attacked and killed by one or more wild animals. Aside from the dismemberment, there is persuasive evidence that parts of several bodies were, well, devoured."

  "As in eaten."

  "That appears to be the case."

  "In addition to the damage you can see, the female victim in Nebraska was discovered to have several canine hairs clutched in her hand," Mark Howard said.

  "Canine as in dog," Remo stated, feeling hollow.

  "There was a witness to the last attack," Smith added. "Or, rather, a witness to the getaway. A neighbor of the Cartiers, one Edward Beasley, heard some kind of a commotion at the time of the attack and ran outside in time to see the, um, the suspects fleeing from the scene."

  "Suspects," said Remo, "as in more than one?"

  "It gets a little shaky here," Smith said. "The witness has described a pack of dogs, no breed confirmed. They were, he says, accompanied by a monster."

  "What kind of monster?"

  "His words, not mine," Smith said. "A hairy monster, if you want to be precise."

  Mark clarified. "Specifically, he called it 'A hairy wolf man howling at the moon.'"

  "To top it all off," Smith said, "saliva from a number of the wounds has been identified as human."

  "That bitch!" Remo stated harshly.

  "Judith White," Smith intoned morosely.

  "Who else?" he demanded angrily. "I let her get away."

  "She engineered an escape," Mark Howard said.

  "Whatever."

  Smith took a deep breath. "We don't think it's her, Remo."

  "Huh? Of course it's her."

  "There are a number of things about it that don't fit," Howard said. "Even if she is still alive, you did close down her stable."

  "So what? You know how fast she works when she sets her mind to it. You drink her special blend, and next thing you're a human animal hungry for meat. This is right up her alley."

  "It's not, though," Howard said. "Judith White wouldn't work for organized crime. Why would she?"

  Remo gave him a bitter stare. "We're not talking about a woman with a lot of scruples, Junior. She needs cash to fund her little mad-scientist research labs. She wouldn't have qualms about doing hits for the mob if it pays for the Bunsen burners."

  "She'd know the crime scenes would be full of odd clues to tip off law enforcement, for one," Smith said. "And she is not fond of publicity."

  "Also, the hairs at the scene were canine," Mark Howard reminded Remo. "White has not been known to make much use of canine DNA in her gene-splicing experiments."

  Remo was exasperated and angry. "Earth to stupid guy-that bitch put a little of everything in her special brew. A little tiger, a little leech, a little whatever. If there happened to be a stray dog raiding the garbage cans, she'd have wrung his neck and dumped him into the pot, too."

  There was a moment of silence while they considered this. Then Remo sighed. "You're right. These killings aren't her style. That means it's one of her pups."

  "Now I think we are on the same wavelength," Smith said, nodding. "We have to consider that's the source of this so-called monster."

  Remo laughed hollowly. "What the hell else would we consider?"

  THE OLD Asian was about to say something when Remo walked into the duplex. Maybe something derogatory. Maybe just a mild insult. Whatever it was, he swallowed it when he sensed Remo's smoldering self-recrimination.

  Chiun, Master of Sinanju Emeritus, said simply, "My son?"

  "Little Father." Remo paced the nearly empty living room.

  A minute later he lowered himself to sit crosslegged on the mat, facing Chiun, and started again. "Little Father. I failed."

  "How did you fail?" asked the little man in a singsong voice that held a deep compassion at rare times. Like now.

  "Judith White. She's started killing again. Or one of her litters, anyway." He told Chiun all the details. "She got away from me in the end," Remo said. "If I would have stopped her then, this wouldn't be happening."

  "But Emperor Smith and the young Prince believe this is not her," Chiun mused.

  "They think it's probably connected to her. A bad batch of her potion that she threw out or forgot about or just didn't care about. A bunch of rabid Rin Tin Tins that slipped through the net. The way they're behaving, Smith thinks they might have even been operating for several months, maybe years."

  "So how could you have known of their existence, let alone been responsible for their removal?" Chiun asked in a very straightforward way.

  Remo sighed. "I don't know."

  "You could not," Chiun summed up. "They may have been created before we last encountered Dr. Judith White at her water factory."

  "That lets me off the hook? That just means it was my first kill-Judy failure rather than my second. Either way, I let her get away and now people are dying."

  "There is no way you could have known she did not die in the fire. There was no way you could have foreseen her slippery escape in Maine."

  "Aren't I supposed to be the freaking Master of Sinanju?"

  "You are the Master of Sinanju. There is no 'freaking' and there is no 'supposed' about it. As the Master of Sinanju, you have skills beyond any possessed by other men. But this does not make you omniscient."

  Remo frowned. "Omniscient means knowing everything?"

  Chiun sighed heavily. "Yes."

  "So you're trying to say I don't know everything?"

  "Yes, as you've just demonstrated wondrously."

  "So how come I feel like I let those people die?" Chiun didn't answer that. He could have harangued on the subject for a half hour if he wanted to. And he probably would. Later.

  "Smitty and Junior aren't even convinced it's her or her kids," Remo said bitterly. "Get this. The FBI thinks maybe it's just some guy dressed up in a monster costume. You can buy them anywhere, mail order if you want to skip the stores. Full head and gloves, the feet, whatever. Smitty tried telling me the Feds might be right."

  "And the other canine creatures?"

  "The theory is they're attack-trained dogs," Remo said. "That's easy. You can train a dog to do almost anything. They had a German shepherd in L.A. a few years back, somebody trained him to snatch purses on the street. In Argentina, when Peron was still around, the state po
lice had special handlers training dogs to rape their female prisoners."

  "Trained dogs and monster masks do not explain human saliva in the wounds," Chiun said.

  "Smith says maybe the guy's just a biter," Remo said. "I guess stranger things have happened. Look at Dahmer."

  "What of the witness who survives?" asked Chiun.

  "His name's Jean Cuvier. Some kind of secondstring lieutenant in the Cajun mob before the FBI grabbed Fortier. His specialty was fixing sporting events. He started yapping to the Feds and wound up with a contract on his head and asked the government to help him out. He squealed on the stand about Fortier's dabbling in extortion. He told the jury about Fortier acid-blinding a jockey who forgot he was supposed to lose a race. After the verdict, Cuvier was relocated to Nebraska. Omaha."

  "He will be next," Chiun said, not making it a question.

  "Maybe," said Remo. "I'm gonna go baby-sit him for a while and hope the wolf man comes back. Then we'll know for sure if it's one of Dr. Judy White's little experiments or a guy in a wolf suit. But somebody is bound to try for Cuvier. Fortier's attorneys have a motion for a new trial pending in the Seventh Circuit, and it could go either way. If it goes back to trial and he's eliminated all the prosecution witnesses, Fortier walks."

  "When the killers come for this Cuvier, they will be forced to reveal their true nature," Chiun mused. "This will put your mind at ease."

  "Huh? How?"

  "To know their origin is to understand them. Once you understand them, then you will know you are not responsible for their being or culpable in their crimes. It is as the Emperor says, Remo-they are not necessarily the offspring of the madwoman Judith White."

  Remo wasn't buying it. "But another set of cannibal killers springs up just a few months after Dr. White slips through the net? Not likely."

  "Maybe it is. Since we encountered the cannibal woman, Smith has doubtless inveigled his electronic information machines to look for the telltale signs of an attack matching the nature of Dr. White. The killers were there, but only now has it come to the attention of Emperor Smith."

  "I think you're reaching for straws."

  "I do not reach for straws. Ever. Also, consider that perhaps this creature is not a product of Dr. White and is not a masquerader in a costume, but a true wolf man."

  "Huh?"

  "Spoken like a true Master. It is unlikely, I agree, that an American would have such powers. All the more since his ancestors came from France. If he was Asian, now, perhaps..."

  "You don't believe in werewolves, do you, Little Father?"

  Chiun regarded Remo with a frown. "Such tales are not unique to Europe and America," he said at last. "Koreans have never sought communion with the lower beasts, but it is not unknown in China and Japan, where degradation of the species is routine."

  "A Chinese wolf man?"

  "In fact, the were fox is more common," Chiun replied. "No doubt, the lowly Chinese once attempted to improve their ignoble mental state by interbreeding with a wiser animal. The end result, predictably, was not as they intended."

  "You're not serious." Remo had conjured a mental image. "I can't picture it. I mean, I guess I can see a Chinese were-fox, but what I can't picture is the actual mating between the human and the fox."

  "I chose not to even attempt to visualize such a thing," Chiun said rancorously.

  "Especially since you gotta know the fox is not going to be a willing partner," Remo added before Chiun could continue. "So the poor thing probably had to get tied up or something."

  "Doubtless."

  "So you're talking about Chinese bondage bestiality."

  "No," Chiun replied firmly, "it is you who keeps talking about it."

  "It's outlandish. I don't believe it."

  "That is because you are incapable of using a computer and thus cannot know that such outlandish things are reality. Ask the Prince Regent to locate such material on the Internet. I seriously doubt he will fail to find photographic evidence of some poor fox enduring what I have described. I'm sure you will find it utterly fascinating and it may pique your interest in a new hobby. Now may I continue with my story?"

  Chiun's tone told Remo that it was a rhetorical question and he had better not answer at all if he didn't want to get slapped upside the head.

  "It is well-known that in some parts of China there are foxes who can take on human form at will," Chiun said sternly. "For some reason best known to themselves, they nearly always take the form of women, to entice some lowly peasant from his toil and trap him in a web of sensual delights before they rob him of his meager senses and his life."

  "That sounds more like a succubus," said Remo, "but we're talking werewolves here. Full moons and silver bullets. Pentagrams and Michael Landon. Did you ever see the movies?"

  "There is, of course, a classic story of a werewolf from Korea," Chiun said. "The fairy tale told to Korean children says the man in the story is a common woodcutter. What the Korean legend fails to recall is that it was actually a Master of Sinanju."

  "I hope it's not Master Pak," Remo warned. Chiun looked at him askance and slightly confused. "Why do you hope it is not Master Pak?"

  "Because Pak's the one who met the vampire, right?"

  "Yes. Why does this matter?"

  "Come on, Chiun, didn't you ever see the Universal black-and-whites where they started pairing up monsters without logical explanation? Even when I was a kid it strained my credulity."

  "Are you speaking of motion pictures?"

  "Yeah. Like in Frankenstein Versus the Wolf Man. They had the wolf man just happen to stumble across Frankenstein's castle. So, never mind that the wolf man could have been running around in any forest in all of Eastern Europe, it's pure coincidence he finds the one place where there's another monster. "

  "Do you have a point?" Chiun demanded.

  "There was one that was even worse but I can't remember which-it had the Frankentsein monster and the wolf man and Dracula. The big three 1940s monsters all ending up together for no adequately explained-"

  "Enough!" Chiun barked.

  "What? What?"

  "You are babbling, imbecile!"

  "I'm just trying to tell you that I'm gonna have a hard time believing that Master Pak ran into both a vampire and a werewolf."

  "It was you, not I, who mentioned Master Pak!"

  "So was he the one who met a werewolf?"

  "No, white blabbermouth, it was Master Hun-Tup."

  Remo considered that and nodded. "The guy who rode around with Marco Polo."

  "As you would have learned long, long ago if you would only have exerted the will required to lock your grotesquely swollen lips together long enough to allow me to speak!"

  "Long ago? We just started discussing it thirty seconds ago."

  "An eternity of interruptions."

  "Hey, fine," Remo said, tightly closing his mouth and pantomiming locking them with a key. "Mm. Mmmmm?"

  "I'll be satisfied only if you manage to keep them like that long enough for me to finish telling the history of Hun-Tup's encounter with a werewolf."

  Remo looked at him expectantly and, Chiun noticed, not a little sarcastically.

  "Master Hun-Tup was traveling when he came to Kanggye. The people, when they realized they had a Master of Sinanju in their midst, came to him in great numbers, offering to collect a great sum of gold from every citizen for miles around if he would rid them of their terrible menace-a wolf of enormous size, who attacked and devoured men, women and children. Hun-Tup turned down their offer, for the Masters of Sinanju worked only for kings and emperors. Not the common rabble. Still, he was intrigued, and he went into the forests near Kanggye and quickly found the spoor of this great wolf."

  Remo fought back the urge to ask, "You have wolves in Korea?"

  Chiun glared at the almost-interruption he had seen on Remo's face. "Master Hun-Tup followed the trail and found himself face-to-face with a ferocious wolf. Hun-Tup wounded him mortally with a single blow to the skull
, but didn't kill the beast instantly. He was curious about the beast, and where it went to die, he hoped, would tell him something of its nature. And he was correct. He followed the fleeing beast's trail of bright blood, which led him to a lonely peasant's hovel. There, inside, he found an old hermit lying on the bed, naked except for bloody rags wrapped tight around his wounded skull. Hun-Tup attempted to speak to him, but the old man would not answer. Soon he died and was transformed into a wolf once more."

  Remo looked dubious.

  "Speak now!" Chiun said. He disliked having the history of Sinanju doubted, especially by Master Remo the Illiterate.

  "But you said Koreans don't-"

  "The hermit was Chinese," Chiun replied. "If you applied yourself to study of geography, you would have known that Kanggye stands beside the Yalu River, but a few miles from the Chinese border. "

  "Ah. Of course, it all makes sense now."

  "You are skeptical," said Chiun.

  "Sounds like a fairy tale," Remo replied.

  Chiun made a little sniffing sound, as of dismissal. "I despair of bringing the great history of our village to the blighted desert of your mind."

  "Hey, I've got a hell of a lot of Sinanju history stored up here," Remo protested.

  "Prove it. I will quiz you."

  "Love to but I gotta run," Remo said with a glance at his watch and getting quickly to his feet. "I'm on the next flight out to Omaha, at six-fifteen," said Remo.

  "I'll come, as well," Chiun said, rising.

  "I thought you had a lot of meditating to do."

  "I will meditate in the hotel room while you go about serving your Emperor and performing your duties as the Reigning Master of Sinanju. And on the aircraft you can take my quiz."

  "That," Remo said, "would be wonderful." Remo was lying. It would, in reality, suck.

  "I knew you would think so," Chiun sang out brightly. Chiun was lying, as well. He knew Remo would hate it. That was part of what made it fun.