The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite #4)(115)

“She’s the woman who’s been in the news?” Davis asked. He looked through the front window at Strickland and Orr sitting inside. “The one they thought walked off the mountain?”

“She’s the one,” Tracy said.

Davis shook his head. “What’s she doing way out here?”

“Trying to start over,” Tracy said.

Davis looked from the window to the valley and the surrounding peaks. “And the body still out there—explain that to me again?”

“Stan Fields,” Tracy said. “He’s a Pierce County detective in Washington. He had the case originally, realized there was a pot of money nobody might ever find, and came after it.”

“And you’re investigating the death of the woman whose body was found in a crab pot?”

“That’s right.”

“And Fields killed her and put her in the pot.”

“Yes.”

“And Andrea Strickland was just a possible witness.”

“She and the woman were friends.”

Davis’s brow furrowed. He gave Tracy an inquisitive, not-completely-believing look. “What the hell kind of cases do you people get up in Washington?”

“Tell me about it,” Tracy said, giving them a tired smile.

“So are you going to need me to swear out a warrant to take her back to Washington?”

Tracy turned and looked again through the window at Andrea Strickland and at her aunt seated on the couch. She knew what taking Andrea back to Seattle meant—an unrelenting media that would hound her incessantly. They would report and speculate and speculate some more. She knew Graham would also come out of the woodwork, claim his allegiance to Andrea, despite everything . . . and to his baby. Andrea would have to fight him, fight for a divorce. Fight for her child. Fight for her trust.

“I’ll let you know,” Tracy said.

Davis blew out a breath and turned to Pearson. “Okay,” he said. “We’re going to go see what progress they’re making on the body retrieval.”

Tracy stepped inside the cabin as Davis and Pearson walked off, crossing the wooden bridge and moving to the rear of the house. When she stepped inside, Andrea Strickland looked up. Penny Orr appeared to be in a daze.

“What happens now?” Andrea asked. “Am I under arrest?”

Tracy sat on the love seat. “You suggested the trip up Mount Rainier?”

Strickland looked surprised by the question and paused to get her bearings. “Yes.”

“And your intent was to fake your own death and have your husband be a suspect.”

Strickland nodded. “When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I had to go. I couldn’t raise a child with a man like that, someone abusive. I didn’t want that for my baby. I knew he’d be a suspect, but I also knew he’d never be convicted, not without a body. There’d be no way for anyone to be certain. I wanted it that way. I wanted him to know that I knew what he’d intended to do, and that I was still alive.”

“How did you find out about him and Devin Chambers?”

“Devin and I were out together one night. Graham had left for the weekend—at least that’s what he told me. I don’t know why, but I told her that I was using an alias to move the money. She got up to use the bathroom and left her purse on the table. Graham called her cell phone, or a cell phone. She had two. He had no reason to be calling her.”

“How did she know about Lynn Hoff, and about the bank accounts?”

“I went into her work computer that night and embedded all the information. My plan was to tell my boss I suspected Graham was having an affair and to implicate Devin. I figured when they pursued it, they’d search her computers and find the information, suspect her and Graham of plotting to kill me. She must have found the information on the computer. That’s likely the reason she took off. I didn’t know she was stealing the money until I saw the withdrawals from the bank account. I knew it had to be her and I figured she was going to run.”

“So you moved the money.”

“My aunt and I moved it overseas,” Andrea said. “I don’t have a lot of Internet access up here. We went into Independence. I thought that would be the end of it. My aunt told me they suspected Graham but couldn’t really prove anything. I didn’t know Devin had been killed, but I figured it out when my aunt told me they’d found a crab pot with a woman’s body in it and people were saying it was me.” She shook her head and wiped away tears. “I didn’t mean for anyone to die. I feel like I’m responsible for her death. I feel like I killed her.”

“You’re not,” Tracy said. “Fields is responsible.” She thought about that. “And so is your husband, and Devin Chambers, to some degree.”

“You reap what you sow,” Penny Orr said, lifting her head.

“Something like that,” Tracy said.

“How can I raise a child with a man who was going to kill me?” Andrea Strickland said, shaking her head. “And even if I divorce him, how can I let that man anywhere near my child?”

“That’s not a legal question. That’s a moral question.” Tracy smiled.

Andrea gave her an inquisitive look. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s out of my jurisdiction.”