The Bride Price

“Please,” she managed, begging him to save her from herself, “this is a popular spot. Despite the weather, some-one’s bound to come along and see us!”

His determination to have her seemingly as fixed as the North Star he’d woven into the retelling of a Native American legend beside their campfire the night before, David nuzzled his kisses lower. “Don’t worry,” he advised. “No-body’s going to gawk at your beautiful breasts. I’ll keep them covered with my hands and mouth…”

Abruptly Kyra’s bedside phone rang, shattering the scene her unconscious mind had chosen to present her with in a thousand shining fragments. Jarred and disoriented, with the flush of arousal it had brought to her cheeks slowly fading, she groped for the receiver.

“Hello?” she muttered, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Kyra, it’s Dad,” her caller announced in his raspy baritone. “Did I wake you, sweetheart?”

Chief prosecutor for Coconino County, Arizona, for more than twenty years, Big Jim Frakes had been widowed for nearly as long. He’d raised Kyra by himself from the time she was eleven. Though he kept close tabs on her even now, he usually called around dinnertime. Something must be up, she thought. About to reassure him that her alarm was set to go off in a few minutes, anyway, she remembered it was a Saturday.

“Sort of,” she admitted, propping herself against some pillows. “But I needed to get up, anyway. What can I do for you, Dad?”

The momentary pause was uncharacteristic of him. “Frankly,” he said with regret, “I could use a little help.”

At sixty-four, and having developed a spot of heart trouble, Big Jim would be retiring soon. Lately he’d begun to make ever more insistent noises about wanting Kyra to return to Flagstaff and work for him—run for election in his stead when his current term was up. The problem was that he had a capable and likeable first assistant, middle-aged Tom Hanrahan, who’d been waiting in the wings for nearly eight years hoping to play that role.

Her father knew how she felt about going head-to-head with Tom. She wouldn’t want to do it. She’d told him so half a dozen times, at least. Her other reason for staying away from the town where she’d grown up and the gorgeous sweep of canyon, high desert and pine-clad mountain country she loved so much was one they couldn’t talk about. Any mention of David and the fact that he owned a ranch near Flagstaff—one with a striking stone-and-cedar house surrounded by ponderosa pines—would reopen too many wounds.

“Problems at work, Dad?” she asked lightly. “Or is it something of a more personal nature?”

Again she caught that slight hesitation.

“Both, I guess,” he admitted at last. “The fact is, I’m faced with trying Paul Naminga for murder. And I—”

Kyra gasped. “Not another tragedy in the Naminga family! I can’t believe Paul would ever commit such a crime.”

A Hopi paramedic who’d chosen to live and work in Flagstaff rather than remain in the Second Mesa village of Mishongnovi on the reservation where he’d been raised, Paul Naminga was known and liked in both the Anglo and Native American communities. Still, the family had a history of trouble. Five years earlier, Paul’s mildly retarded, alcoholic older brother, Leonard, had been on trial on charges of manslaughter, grand theft auto and driving under the influence. It had been during this trial that Kyra, then a second-year law student, and David Yazzie, who’d been employed as the first-ever Native American assistant on Big Jim’s staff, had gotten to know each other.

Because the alleged crimes had taken place off the reservation, a short distance from the Lariat Bar on Route 89 north of town, the case had been prosecuted in state rather than federal court. Despite Leonard’s frantic, somewhat garbled denials of any wrongdoing, all the available evidence had pointed to him. He’d been found drunk and confused behind the wheel of Dale Cargill’s pickup truck, which had been reported missing by its owner a short time earlier. At some point prior to the arrival of the sheriff’s deputies on the scene, the truck had plowed into a shabby sedan, killing both occupants, a local man and woman in their late sixties.

Off for the summer, Kyra had volunteered to help with the case, which, while tragic, had seemed basically open-and-shut. Slowly, however, both she and David had begun to wonder whether Leonard Naminga might be innocent. Sublimating their loyalty to Big Jim, they’d done their best to check out their hunch.

The effort had come to nothing. Leonard had been convicted, anyway, and sent off to state prison. A few days later David had quit Big Jim’s staff and walked out of Kyra’s life without a word or a backward glance, leaving her stunned and heartsick. The resulting downward spiral of her emotions had threatened to sink her third-year grade point average.

At least, it had until her father had explained the part he’d played in David’s disappearance. Shamefacedly he’d confessed to bribing the man Kyra loved with ten thousand dollars to dump her—for her own good. He’d justified the costly, underhanded move by arguing that he’d wanted her to finish law school and establish a legal career for herself instead of dropping out to get married and have David Yazzie’s babies.

She’d refused to believe it in the beginning. Told him he was lying, that David would never stoop so low. It was only when he’d shown her the entry in his checkbook, explaining that the canceled check hadn’t been returned to him yet, that she’d begun to think it possible. Sobbing that she wouldn’t have dropped out if David had asked her to marry him, Kyra had refused to speak to her father for several months.

Only later had she become suspicious that, despite Big Jim’s apparent liking for David, and his frequently stated admiration for the handsome young assistant prosecutor’s savvy and toughness, his real reason for attempting to break them up had stemmed from the fact that David was part Native American. She’d been furious with both men—David for selling her out and her father for his unstated prejudice.

She’d finally forgiven the latter after numerous abject apologies on his part. No apologies or communication of any kind had been forthcoming from David. Though she’d married fellow law graduate Brad Martin on the rebound and divorced him three and a half years later because they’d had nothing in common, not even their principles, the pain and deep sense of loneliness David had caused by accepting her father’s bribe remained the major hurt in her heart.

It still rankled with her that he’d almost certainly used the money to set up a shoestring legal practice, parlaying it into a highly successful career. In the five years since they’d seen each other, he’d made a name for himself representing clients of modest means, many of them Native American, against the government and wealthy corporations. In the process, he’d won some spectacular judgments. Lately he’d begun to be quoted as a legal expert on television.

He stepped over me on his way to fame and fortune, Kyra thought. Yet, who can blame him? Asked to make a choice, he embraced what mattered to him most. She only wished his fleeting, unconsummated romance with the county attorney’s daughter had occupied a more important place in his heart.

Now Paul Naminga’s life and liberty were at stake. “Who’s Paul supposed to have killed?” she asked, pushing down the heartsick feeling that always troubled her when thoughts of David surfaced.

“Ben Monongye,” Big Jim was saying. “You remember him…the thickset Hopi with the scarred right cheek who put together a successful construction business with the help of federal setasides for minorities.”

Kyra did. Though she’d admired Ben’s hard work and tough-mindedness, she’d always thought him a little brash and self-seeking. From what she’d heard via the grapevine, he’d considered himself something of a Casanova with the ladies.

“He and Paul were both scheduled to perform in the Hopi segment of a multitribe dance festival that was held on the Museum of Northern Arizona grounds last weekend,” her father continued. “Apparently Ben had been hitting on Paul’s wife, Julie. 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.