She arrived in Flagstaff shortly after 9 a.m., the appointed hour for the informal exchange of discovery in State of Arizona v. Naminga to start. Parking the Cherokee in a recently vacated spot and getting out to smooth her beige wool gabardine suit and neat French-braided chignon, she couldn’t quell her nervousness.
What if I’m still in love with him after all this time? she tormented herself. I don’t think I could bear it. I. have a right to get over him—to learn to be happy with someone else.
With its prominent clock tower, the red sandstone court-house where her father’s office was situated had long been a Flagstaff landmark. The dark-paneled lobby, with its murky portraits in oil and broad, imposing staircase leading to the second floor, was just as she remembered it. Only the anteroom to his private lair had changed. If possible, it appeared to be even more choked with files and papers.
“Long time no see,” Jody Ann Daniels greeted her, interrupting her typing to give Kyra her usual insouciant grin. “I hate to say it, but you look better every time I see you. The meeting got started a few minutes ago. Your dad said to tell you that if you made it in time, you were to go right in.”
Her heart in her throat, Kyra entered her father’s office, which hadn’t changed much since her childhood. Law books and Zane Gray novels still filled the shelves. Paintings of cowboys and hunting trophies crowded the walls, reflecting the bluff, plainspoken county attorney’s interests. A pair of skis he hadn’t used for a decade reposed in one corner, gathering dust.
Keenly conscious of David’s presence and the fact that he’d risen to his feet, Kyra postponed acknowledging him as she returned her father’s affectionate squeeze and greeted the court reporter he’d summoned, whom she’d known since high school.
At last, swallowing, she turned to face the man she’d snubbed, who owned the lion’s share of her attention.
So surprising against the palette of his coppery skin and coal black hair, David’s light, beautiful eyes seemed to burn with a fire that had something hidden at its heart. All the lectures she’d given herself notwithstanding, she wanted to drown in them, offer to be his hostage.
“Kyra,” he said simply in his soft, deep voice, holding out his hand to her.
If she was to maintain any semblance of control over the situation, she had to take it. Grasped lightly, it was firm, callused and warm enough to send little shivers of awareness racing up her arms. Every kiss they’d exchanged, every intimacy she’d permitted him in her formerly besotted state, seemed to hover between them in memory, suggesting renewed, even more passionate congress.
“Hello…good to see you again,” she murmured, realizing too late how idiotic and awkward the words must sound. They were hardly strangers. Or even mere acquaintances.
Holding her captive a moment longer than necessary, David responded that it was good to see her, too. She’d been a girl when he’d left. Now she was a woman. Another man had initiated her. With a fierceness he didn’t let show, he longed to step back in time and undo that hurt, claim the priceless opportunity he’d missed for himself.
He’d never been able to manage the first half of that equation where she was concerned. His feelings always got in the way. As for changing things, he’d long since learned that only the future held possibilities.
For her part, Kyra was overwhelmed by his quiet power and almost mystical resonance. In the years they’d been apart, he seemed to have acquired a depth and maturity that were stunning for a man in his mid-thirties. How can someone whose loyalties were so shifting, so available for purchase, project such an aura of decency and wisdom? she asked herself.
There didn’t seem to be any answer. Meanwhile, his physical magnetism was overpowering her. Though he was dressed for his lawyer’s role in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt and tie, she couldn’t help but imagine him in faded, slightly shrunken blue jeans. Compared to him, the husband she’d divorced and the men she’d dated since were ciphers—pallid imitations of the standard he’d set.
Somehow she had to resist if he tried to jump-start their romance. Remembering the money he took ought to do it, she thought bitterly. In her experience, the principles he claimed to espouse were so much poppycock.
Conscious her father was watching her for signs that she was still susceptible, she shuttered her feelings and pulled a worn wooden chair up to one corner of his desk. “Please…don’t let me interrupt,” she murmured. “I assume no one will mind if I take a few notes.”
In Arizona an “open file” rule prevailed, in which both sides in a criminal case could consult a list maintained by the county clerk in which the opposing attorneys catalogued the evidence they planned to present and their proposed witnesses. However, Kyra’s father had always held discovery meetings. He claimed to like the give-and-take, the small-town camaraderie, not to mention the chance to pick up some tidbit of information or other he couldn’t have accessed by any other means.
Taking up where he’d left off, Big Jim continued to run down his list of witnesses. It turned out to be a lengthy one, given the number of people who’d seen Paul Naminga and Ben Monongye trade blows outside the latter’s trailer. Many of the names, both Anglo and Native American, were familiar to her. However, she didn’t know the young girl who’d seen a man in Paul’s costume go into Ben’s trailer. Moving on to the preliminary tests investigators had conducted on the bloodstains, he offered David a copy of the lab report. “Something else has, uh, come up,” her father added in a tone that alerted Kyra he regarded it as a chink in his armor. “The crime scene unit found several hairs in the trailer where Ben Monongye was stabbed that don’t match his or Paul’s. Their natural color seems to have been black-gray…”
David frowned with interest. “You say natural?”
“Turns out they were coated with black hair dye. Of course, they could have been shed in the trailer at some point before the murder took place…maybe even weeks earlier. On the day of the performance, lots of people were in and out of those trailers. Besides, they were rentals. No telling where they’d been before Suzy Horvath rented them.”
Suzy Horvath, a forty-something divorcee who owned and edited a local tabloid, had organized the dance festival. Out of the corner of her eye, Kyra caught David’s quick flash of smile.
“Thanks,” he said, the grooves beside his mouth deepening. “That’s a little bit of evidence we can work with.”
Big Jim shrugged, hiding any concern he might feel. “I don’t think it’s going to amount to much.”
They were almost finished when Judge Beamish, who would preside over Paul’s case, sauntered in from his chambers down the hall to perch on a windowsill. Though he didn’t interrupt, he gave Kyra a smile and nod of recognition. A moment or two later, he was followed by a bailiff, who’d brought the handcuffed defendant over from his cell in the nearby jail.
So there’s to be a bail hearing, too, Kyra realized, exchanging a silent hello with the clean-cut, boyish-looking paramedic. Seeing Paul again made it all the more difficult to believe he was guilty of murder, despite his public confrontation with the victim.
Watching the wheels turn in her head, David picked up on her sympathies as surely as if she’d laid them out for him on her father’s desk. She’s just the same, he marveled. Decent. Fair-minded. A champion of the underdog if it was merited. Despite her experience as a prosecutor, he could tell she was still an ethical defense attorney at heart.
If they’d married, as Kyra had wanted them to when they were working together on the Leonard Naminga case, they’d probably have slept and worked together. The happiness in his life would have been seamless. By now, they might even have become parents, he thought. Aware the heat of his regard was making her uncomfortable, David forced himself to pay attention.