For Love

Chapter 1

It started when Linda Cain murdered her husband, or at least that was what she was charged with. Nobody in town knew the Cains very well. Adam Cain and his wife had moved into the old Bowden place after Jeff Bowden's wife and son left Stockton for someplace she did not disclose except to one person. Jeff's wife didn't want their newborn son to grow up in the shadow of his father's crime, murdering the local priest, so she got what money she could for the place and moved on. The only person she told about where she was going was Jarrod Barkley, her husband's lawyer, her son's godfather. Jarrod kept it to himself.

Jarrod started to think the old Bowden place – now the Cain place – was cursed. Two murderers had lived there, one a man he had believed was innocent but wasn't, the other a woman who just would not talk. She just sat in the jail cell, staring at nothing, even when Jarrod went in saying, "Mrs. Cain, my name is Jarrod Barkley. The Women's League has asked me to represent you."

Linda Cain didn't say anything. When Jarrod heard Sheriff Madden close the cell block door and he knew he was alone with the woman, he pulled up the stool in the cell and sat down, to be eye level with Mrs. Cain sitting on the bunk.

"Mrs. Cain, anything you say to me is privileged information," Jarrod said. "Maybe we can start by you telling me what happened."

Linda Cain was a woman about Jarrod's age, maybe a year or two younger. She had soft, light brown hair that was hanging down to her shoulders now. Her dress was a simple gingham – she and her husband did not seem to be wealthy people. She didn't answer Jarrod.

"All right," Jarrod said. "Maybe we can start earlier. You and your husband came to Stockton not very long ago at all, and as far as I'm aware neither of you had a job of any sort. You bought the old Bowden place – hardly the best place in town – but you had to have come here for a reason. Why don't you tell me what that was?"

She still didn't speak.

"Mrs. Cain, I can't help you if you don't talk to me," Jarrod said.

Still nothing.

"All right," Jarrod said. "Maybe I should get Dr. Merar over here to see how you're doing – "

"No," she said right away, looking at him for the first time.

It was Jarrod's first clue to what this woman was about. "Why not? Have you been seeing him for some reason?"

She looked away again. "That doesn't have anything to do with this."

"Then why are you so touchy about seeing him?" Jarrod asked.

She didn't answer.

"All right," Jarrod said and stood up. "I'll go get him right now and have him check you out."

She flashed a look at him and said, "No."

Jarrod sat down again. "Mrs. Cain, I am your lawyer. Anything you say to me is confidential information. I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth about what happened and why. Your reaction right now tells me it has something to do with Dr. Merar, which tells me that something medical is going on with you, or was with your husband. Dr. Merar says your husband was shot in the head, in the bed you shared with him where he was found. The sheriff says his handgun was found beside him. Dr. Merar has said nothing more about your husband's death and he won't say anything more until you release him to do so. If you won't talk to me, I will get him over here and if you do not release him to talk to me, I will go to the court with a motion to get him released to talk to me so I can defend you."

"I don't want any defense, and I don't want any lawyer," Linda Cain said.

"Why not?" Jarrod asked.

"Because I -," she said, but stopped.

Jarrod straightened up a little, expecting that what she didn't say was that she killed her husband. "You killed your husband," he completed for her. "I need to know why. Was he abusing you? Did he hit you?"

"No, he never touched me that way," she said.

"Did he swear at you or yell at you all the time?"

"No," she said.

"Did he cheat on you with someone else?"

"No," she said and looked straight at Jarrod again. "He did nothing wrong."

Jarrod kept his stare on her eyes, until she looked away again. "You had to have had a reason for killing him," he said, more gently now. "You didn't kill him just because you didn't love him anymore because it's obvious that's not true. At least it's obvious to me."

"Please, Mr. Barkley, just go away," she finally said. "I don't need a lawyer. I'm not fighting anything."

"Or explaining anything," Jarrod said. "The explanation could mean the difference between living your life or going to the gallows."

Linda Cain was silent for a long moment, before she said, "There's not much difference between the two."

"Mrs. Cain," Jarrod said, even more gently. "Maybe it's that your husband was going to abandon you – "

"No," she said quickly.

But Jarrod went right on with the words he'd planned. "But I am not going to abandon you, even if you want me to. I will get a court order to get Dr. Merar to talk to me."

It was a bluff. Jarrod knew he'd never get a court order if Linda Cain opposed it, and Dr. Merar would not talk without one. But Jarrod knew there was a reason this woman shot her husband in the head, probably one that would provide her a defense, and Dr. Merar knew what it was.

Linda Cain didn't say anything more at all and did not look at him, but looked down at her hands in her lap. Jarrod read something into that that maybe wasn't there, but maybe it was. She did want to be helped. She did want Jarrod to know why she had killed her husband. So why wouldn't she talk to him? Was it that she just didn't believe she deserved a defense?

Jarrod felt a load of pity fall onto him, pity he didn't have when he walked in here a few minutes ago. He wanted to find a way to help this woman, because something had happened between her and her husband that caused her to kill him.

IF she killed him. Jarrod was beginning to wonder even about that. Did he kill himself? Did she stage it to look like she had killed him? But why would she do such a thing?

"Mrs. Cain," Jarrod said, standing up again. "I'm going to go talk to Dr. Merar. I will find out what happened, and I will represent you unless once I do find out the truth, you ask me not to. The truth is the only thing that's going to make me go away, but I'm betting it's the truth that will help you, and if that's so, I'm betting you will want my help."

She still didn't move or talk.

"Sheriff!" Jarrod called.

Sheriff Madden came in, let Jarrod out of the cell, and locked it again. Jarrod went out into the office and the sheriff followed, closing the cell block door behind him. Jarrod stopped in the middle of the room, and Sheriff Madden heaved a sigh. "She wouldn't talk to you, would she?"

"No," Jarrod said. "Dr. Merar's report on Adam Cain's death – has it been filed in the court records yet?"

"Yes," Sheriff Madden said. "It says what you'd think – Adam Cain died from a gunshot wound to the head."

"He didn't say it was self-inflicted."

"No, just a gunshot to the head, but we know it wasn't self-inflicted."

"Do we?" Jarrod asked.

Sheriff Madden looked perplexed. "She says she shot him. She said so as soon as I got to that bedroom."

"Where was the gun when you found him?"

"On the bed next to him but she said she put it there."

Jarrod said, "There's something Mrs. Cain isn't saying, something that will explain Adam Cain's death more fully and something I'd bet explains why she killed him, or why she's claiming she killed him if she didn't do it."

"Why would she say she did it if she didn't do it?"

"Did you know them very well before this happened?"

"I didn't know them at all," Sheriff Madden said. "Did you?"

"No," Jarrod said. "I hadn't even met them. Do you know anyone who had?"

"No. He didn't work and neither did she, and they hadn't been here even a month yet. I don't even think they opened an account at the bank. Maybe they bought something at the grocer's or the mercantile, but I haven't asked around."

"Do you know where they lived before they came here?"

"No, I don't. They just bought the Bowden place out of nowhere."

Jarrod's eyes deepened as he thought about things. "I'm gonna have a look at Dr. Merar's report and then go talk to him, and ask around a bit and see if anybody can tell me anything about the Cains."

"You're gonna represent her?" the sheriff asked.

"For now," Jarrod said. "The Women's League asked me to and even if Mrs. Cain isn't too keen on having a defense, she hasn't out and out fired me yet – at least not with those words."

"Well, good luck," Sheriff Madden said. "Maybe you can make a hole or two in that wall of hers, but I haven't been able to, and she's gonna go to trial next week. Even without a lawyer telling her to, she did plead not guilty."

"Which says even more to me that there's something about all this that we don't know," Jarrod said. "I'll go over to the courthouse and enter my appearance as her attorney, and after I have a look at Dr. Merar's report, I'll go talk to him."

"He wouldn't talk to me without her releasing him to."

"And he probably won't talk to me, but maybe there's something in that report I can use to ask questions and getting no answers may lead me somewhere. That does happen, you know."

"With you, yeah. You do seem to know how to use the lack of an answer to get what you're looking for."