Loving Time

fifty-five

Bobbie Boudreau did not need to send the Treadwell bitch any more messages. The old woman was right. Treadwell had called in the FBI. She knew he was out there now, and she was running scared. He liked that. A suit was guarding her building, an FBI agent, not a cop. He knew a cop would look like a homeless person or a delivery man from Pizza Hut. The suit you could pick out from two blocks away, right down to the device in his ear so somebody could talk to him from another planet. Just like they did for the President of the United States. Bobbie had to be pretty important if they had to call in the FBI to keep him out of Treadwell’s office. He guessed by now there was another suit standing outside the executive suite on the twentieth floor. It made him want to laugh. Did they think he was stupid?

He could stand out in plain view and they wouldn’t see him. They didn’t know jackshit. Let the police come, let the FBI come, let the whole fucking Army come. What would they find? Nothing. The whole thing made him want to laugh. How long did they think they could secure the area? A week, two weeks, a month?

They could hang around a whole year, for all he cared. This was his territory. He’d been here for fifteen years. He wasn’t going anywhere. He stayed underground most of the time he wasn’t working. Let them worry about where he was and what he was doing. Let them think whoever was bothering the bitch was gone now, far away. He wasn’t showing up for any party with the feds. This wasn’t Waco. This wasn’t Oklahoma. This wasn’t big-time stuff so they could hang out there for weeks just waiting for him to make a move. This was a fucking shrink who killed her patients with words. Whispered nasty little somethings in their ears and down they fell like bowling pins. Bobbie had heard the gossip about the patient who committed suicide because of her. Probably wasn’t the first. These doctors could do anything. They were licensed to kill. Nobody could stop them. She was no better than the bastard back in ’Nam, practicing open-heart surgery on healthy hearts because he wanted to do bypass surgery when he got out. Nobody would say anything. Nobody tried to stop him.

So now it was proven. Words in the mouths of shrinks could kill. Same as guns. Same as explosives, same as poison. Shit—they were carrying concealed weapons that could maim and kill. And nobody had the power to stop them. Only God had the power, and He was taking care of them in His own sweet time.

It was no sin to be on God’s side in this. It was necessary, like war. Sooner or later the FBI was going to be finished bugging and wiring the place. They’d get tired of watching and listening and waiting for him to do something they could nail him for. And then they’d go back to wherever they came from and he’d come out of the basement.