The Bride Price. Suzanne Carey
He and Paul traded blows about it shortly before they were due to put on their costumes. We’ve got umpteen witnesses.”
Frowning, Kyra tried to picture the scene.
“A couple of bystanders broke it up,” Big Jim said. “Paul ordered Ben to stay away from Julie and stalked off toward his trailer. Ben went into another trailer to dress. He never showed up onstage. Though he made it, Paul was late. During the dancing, a couple of kids fishing around in the trailers for loose change discovered Ben’s body.”
“The fact that Paul was late for the performance doesn’t prove he was the killer,” Kyra objected. “There could have been any number of reasons…”
She could almost see her father shaking his head.
“I know you like Paul,” he said, sighing. “I do, too. But Red Miner was right to make the arrest. There’s just too much evidence against him.”
Red Miner was the Coconino County sheriff.
“Give me a ‘for instance,’” Kyra requested.
“Okay, sure. Take the minute spatters of blood the crime-scene techs found on Paul’s Koyemsi costume. Preliminary analysis suggests it matches Ben’s, and I’m betting the DNA report will confirm it. Plus a young girl came forward to say she saw someone costumed like Paul go into Ben’s trailer after everyone headed for the bleachers.”
He paused. “Of course, her testimony doesn’t make it an open-and-shut case. As you probably remember, unlike the sacred clown dancers, the Koyemsi are masked. We don’t have an eyewitness, as such.”
The thought that maybe Paul didn’t do it settled a little deeper into Kyra’s consciousness. It was like a replay of what had happened to his brother, she thought. Most of the evidence was circumstantial.
“Paul claims he’s innocent,” Big Jim said. “That he was late for the performance because some Navajo kid ran up to him as he was about to get dressed and begged him to come revive one of his friends, who’d been sniffing glue. Unfortunately we couldn’t locate any of the boys to corroborate his story.”
In all likelihood, her father was right. The blood on the costume would match Ben’s. And the evidence would pile up. Lacking another suspect, a jury would convict Paul. It didn’t look good for him.
Meanwhile, Big Jim hadn’t explained what kind of help he wanted. Her heart sank a moment later when he let it be known that David Yazzie had taken charge of Paul’s defense.
Her dream taking on the aura of a premonition, Kyra conjured a mental picture of David’s broad shoulders and slim hips. How she’d loved the brilliant flash of smile that could illuminate his tanned, chiseled features like sunlight breaking through storm clouds over a distant mesa. And his hands. Oh, his hands…
“This will likely be my last big case,” her father was saying. “I don’t want to lose it, especially not to him. With your help—”
The prospect of running into David on the street had been enough to keep Kyra’s visits to her hometown to a minimum. Now she was supposed to return voluntarily, battle it out with him in the courtroom, face-to-face?
“What about Tom Hanrahan?” she said. “Surely he can give you all the help you need.”
“Sorry. But he can’t, honey. Tom’s hospitalized in Missoula, Montana…in traction with a broken leg. He got injured on a hunting trip. He’ll be out of the picture for quite a while.”
He hadn’t said so, yet Kyra guessed her father thought David would be gunning for him. Though David might have taken her father’s money and run with it five years earlier, he wouldn’t have thanked him for making the offer. Despite his own mercenary behavior he’d have been deeply insulted to realize Big Jim didn’t consider his mixed Navajo, Hispanic and Anglo blood good enough for his daughter—whether or not he’d ever had serious designs on her.
“I remember you mentioning recently that you’ve accrued a mountain of compensatory time,” her father said. “If it wouldn’t be too much of a hardship, I wish you could take some of it off. Come down to Flag and help me prosecute.”
Kyra realized he was probably hoping her presence on the prosecution team would rattle David, create sufficient tension to give the prosecution an edge. However, she was well aware of his respect for her ability. Thanks to her experience in the Office of the U.S. Attorney, she was Tom Hanrahan’s equal at the very least.
Dad’s getting older, she thought. And tired. He wants to go out with his head up. Maybe because of David’s reputation as an attorney who doesn’t take many cases he can’t win, his faith in his ability to do that has become a little shaky.
Much as she wanted to help, she wasn’t ready to see David again. Her hurt over his betrayal, and her heart’s stubborn inability to get over him, still ran deep. Still, she’d just put an important case to bed. And she had been working a lot of seventy-hour weeks. She didn’t want her father to realize David was still a burr under her saddle. She could, she supposed, drive down, go over his brief for him, suggest some arguments.
“You know I want to help,” she hedged. “But I’ll have to talk to my boss before making any promises. We’ve got a lot of important work coming up. If he can spare me, maybe we can work something out.”
Clearly pleased that she hadn’t turned him down flat, Big Jim promised to call her Monday night. “I’ll be mighty appreciative of whatever you can do to help,” he said. “No doubt it’s a proud father speaking. But you took to prosecuting like a duck to water. With Tom laid up in Missoula, I couldn’t do better than to have you on my side.”
Putting down the receiver after exchanging a few more words with him, Kyra headed for the shower. Inevitably, as she shampooed her sun-streaked blond hair and scrubbed her body with foaming jojoba-scented gel, the spray brought back her dream of Havasu Falls and all the volatile, half-buried emotions it had evoked. In a couple of weeks, if Big Jim had his way, she’d be seeing David again— gazing into stunning eyes capable of undressing her soul and extracting its every secret.
Unwillingly, because she didn’t want to fall under his spell again, she imagined herself running her fingers through his thick, sweet-smelling hair, which was as sensuous to the touch as coarse, black silk. How she’d loved being crushed by his powerful arms. Kissed everywhere she’d allowed his libidinous mouth to wander.
Just to watch him address a jury, smolderingly handsome in a business suit and tie, or sauntering toward her in faded jeans with the bred-in-the-bone grace of his Native American ancestors and a knowing grin on his face had caused her to thank God every morning that she was young, female and relatively good-looking in the world he inhabited.
She thought of his powerful sexual allure and her apprehension over his formidable reputation as a defense attorney who seemed to possess an extraordinary talent for unraveling the facts of a case. Though she tried to shake them off, these memories clung to Kyra as she tugged on jeans, a sweatshirt and a windbreaker to jog in a park near her home and go about her Saturday errands.
Though his morals hadn’t extended to refusing her father’s bribe, David apparently was unswerving in his demand that the clients he accepted be guiltless and/or deserving of redress, according to several newspaper and journal articles she’d read about him. If that’s true, he must believe in Paul Naminga’s innocence, since he agreed to defend him, she acknowledged as she unloaded a week’s worth of groceries at the checkout counter of her favorite supermarket. Her father’s job as prosecutor was going to be tough despite the evidence Red Miner had collected.
When Kyra broached the matter of a sabbatical with her boss, U.S. Attorney Jonathan Hargrave, on Monday, he insisted she take as much time as she needed to help her father. “You’ve been driving yourself way too hard,” he lectured her. “I don’t want you to burn out. Or fall prey to some stress-related ailment. Take a breather…six weeks at least, more if you need it…and do what you can for your dad. You might even try