Touch of Evil Read Online Free PDF Page A

slogan for their rematch a year from next month: Experience and Judgment. “I’d be glad to take over,” he said.
    “Not take over,” she corrected. Not yet, anyway. “Act on my authority. Report to me personally before each shift for instruction.”
    His hand dropping, he stared at her, his contempt unmasked. Naked. Brutal. It was a stark reminder of the most important reason she hadn’t fired the annoying SOB.
    She preferred to keep her enemies close at hand, where she could watch them.
    Before Ross caught sight of Kenneth Fleming in his white coat, he heard the charge nurse’s scathing, “Fashionably late doesn’t cut it in this ER, Doctor. Especially not with Dr. Bollinger just back from being out sick.”
    “I’m fine,” Ross put in firmly.
    “Sorry, Ross. I can explain,” Kenneth said, staring past Debbie at Ross, who was finishing a chart at the counter while the waiting room remained clear.
    Kenneth, an emergency room doctor in his early forties, looked flustered, his thin, gray-threaded hair disheveled, his lab coat rumpled, and his small hands jerking their way through nervous gestures. A good sign, since Kenneth, already on probation following drug rehab, should be worried. Ross would have been more concerned had he dragged in looking cool, a sure sign he’d been hitting the painkillers once again.
    “So what happened?” Ross crossed his arms over his chest to face the prodigal.
    Kenneth looked up, his chubby cheeks and mottled flush making him look disconcertingly like a child explaining a missed curfew to his parents. “I was running the kids back to my ex’s in Fort Worth, and on the way back, my damned front wheel fell off, the right one. Can you believe that?”
    Blue eyes blazing, Debbie slid Ross a look that said she didn’t. Waving off the excuse, she said, “I’m taking my break now.”
    As she strode off muttering, Kenneth protested, looking to Ross for reassurance. “But it’s true this time. I swear it. I’ve even got the tow truck driver’s card here. You can call him. He’ll vouch for me.”
    He whipped a dog-eared rectangle from his pocket and passed it to Ross. “The driver said something about the lug nuts being sheared off. He thought maybe they got overtightened last week when I had that front-end work done. I can tell you, my mechanic’s going to get a call from me as soon as…”
    He fell quiet when Ross raised a hand as he inspected the card, which had a greasy thumbprint and the name Carlos penned on it in blue ink. Neither of which proved a thing.
    “I’ve got receipts out in the glove box,” Fleming added. “One for the tow, and another for the car I rented.”
    “Forget it,” Ross said, “but it’s close to midnight. You should have called so I could’ve gotten somebody to cover.”
    Fleming had a long, involved story about a dead cell battery and a lost charger, but Fleming always had a story. His life was an endless series of mishaps, missteps, and minor-league dramas. Ross had learned that months earlier, around the time Kenneth flunked his second drug test.
    “That’s all right,” Ross said, more interested in checking on his cousin than wasting what little time he had before his next shift listening to excuses. “I’m taking off now. If you’re definitely okay.”
    He followed up the comment with a hard look that had Fleming raising his hands in surrender.
    “I’m great, really. Clean as the day I was born.” His face grew even redder. “You can test me if you want to. Blood, urine, whatever you want. Right now.”
    “I’ll leave that decision up to Tremont,” Ross said, naming the head of the department, the family friend who’d talked him into coming back from Houston after Anne’s death nearly five years earlier. The same man who’d convinced him to come back this week.
    “Listen, Ross. I’m really sorry. If I had realized it was you on duty, so soon after…” Fleming patted his own chest. “How are you anyway?”
    Tired