Badge of Evil Read Online Free PDF

rifle. “I thought I’d surprise you and have the rifles all cleaned so you wouldn’t have to do it.” She raised her eyebrows at his laugh. “What’s so funny, Mitch?”
    “A crazy thought I had. Tell you about it later.”
    “Where’s your brief case? I’ve looked forward all day to seeing it empty for once.” She was talking vacation already.
    “I’ll tell you about that later, too. What’s for dinner?”
    “Food. I can be mysterious, too.” She waited in the breezeway that connected house to garage while he lowered the big overhead door and then they entered the kitchen together. In the dining room beyond Holt could see that the table had been set in more festive style than usual. Connie followed his glance. “We’re celebrating our getaway.”
    “Looks nice,” said Holt noncommittally.
    From the living room came the din of a television set. Connie raised her voice above the racket to call, “Nancy! Daddy’s home!”
    Immediately there was a clatter of feet and their daughter burst into the kitchen crying, “Daddy! Daddy!” She was a gawky seven year old, thin like her father. She threw her arms about Holt’s waist, hugging him fiercely. He ruffled her black hair and then, the extravagant greeting concluded, Nancy rushed back to the television where, to judge by the uproar, great excitement was happening.
    “How can a mere father hope to compete with Howdy Doody?” Holt asked.
    “You’re lucky. The only time I can get her to do anything is during the commercials.” Connie peered into various pots and pans on the stove. “Sit down and talk to me, Mitch. I made a drink for you. It’s in the refrigerator.”
    He got it and perched on the kitchen stool, watching her as she fussed with the food and thinking that he was lucky’ to have such a handsome wife. Even after nine years of marriage, he had never quite gotten over his surprise that he should have snatched such a prize. And against heavy odds, too, considering the difference in their backgrounds. Connie Holt was as American-sounding a name as one could imagine, but she had once been Consuelo Mayatorena and her great-great-great-great something or other had come to the New World with Cortes. Consuelo Mayatorena was a full-blooded Mexican, the daughter of a proud and ancient family which had once owned, by kingly grant, most of Lower California. They still owned as much of it as anyone needed these days, a many-thousand-acre ranch south of Ensenada. As this generation’s only daughter, Consuelo could have had her pick of a hundred equally wealthy young men. But she had chosen instead to become Connie Holt, American housewife and mother, and if she had ever regretted her decision she had never indicated it.
    They had met at the annual Black & White Ball at Ensenada, when Connie — Consuelo, then — was only eighteen, in the first gorgeous bloom of maturity. She was still as slender as when they were married, her complexion as flawless, her figure — even in the slacks and sloppy sweater she wore tonight — as inviting. She was so completely Americanized that Holt seldom thought of her as ever being anything else, except on those rare occasions when anger caused her dark eyes, under heavy brows, to flash and her gestures to become peculiarly Latin. Like many other Mexican daughters whose families could afford it, Connie had been educated in American schools and she spoke better English than her husband.
    “Bring your drink into the bedroom and talk to me while I change,” she told him. “I want to get into the party mood and perhaps I can fool you into thinking I’m still a glamorous creature.”
    He made the appropriate reply to that and sat on the edge of their double bed while Connie rummaged for more feminine garb. But he could not summon up the gay conversation she commanded and she noticed and asked him why. He told her the bad news. Connie took it as he had expected, disappointed but resigned, and Holt thought how different