“Were you considering killing Andrea as a way to get the money?”
“No, not then,” Strickland said. “I hadn’t even thought of Mount Rainier then. Andrea brought it up when I went back to the loft two days later, but that’s not what I want to tell you. What I want to tell you is this. When I was in that bar that night someone said my name and when I looked up, I saw Devin Chambers.”
“Devin Chambers was in the bar?” Tracy asked, skeptical.
“Yes.”
“So you knew her.”
“We’d met a couple of times but I can’t say I knew her.”
“Did you ask her what she was doing there?”
“No.”
“Had you been to that bar before?”
“Sure, many times.”
“Had you ever seen her there before?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t ask her what she was doing there?”
“No. It was just ‘Graham?’ and I turned around.”
“Was she alone?”
“No, she was with a few people. They were leaving and she spotted me and came over to say hello. I guess I looked like I was in pretty bad shape because she asked me what was wrong.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her everything. I told her I’d drunk too much and that I was mad at Andrea, and that we’d had a fight. I wanted to make Andrea look bad, you know, selfish. So I just told Devin everything.”
“Did you tell her about Andrea’s trust?”
“Yes. I said she had all this money and she wouldn’t let me use it to help us.”
“How did she react when you told her?”
“She said if she’d had the money, and I was her husband, she’d give it to me.”
“She said that?”
He nodded.
“Did you go home with her that night?”
Strickland nodded. “Yes.”
“And did you sleep with her?”
“Yes. I was just so angry with Andrea,” he said in a rush, as if it justified sleeping with his wife’s best friend.
“Did you continue to see her after that night?”
Strickland lowered his head. “Yes.”
“Was Devin part of your plan to kill Andrea?”
“Like I said, I wasn’t even considering it then. I just wanted to hurt Andrea, you know?”
“And you thought sleeping with her friend would be a way to hurt her.”
He nodded, looked at the recorder, and said, “Right.”
“Why did you continue to see her then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ever tell Andrea about you and Devin?”
“No.”
“Did Devin tell Andrea?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think so. I don’t know why she would.”
“So did you formulate a plan to kill Andrea on Mount Rainier?”
Montgomery looked as if he was about to say something, then stopped.
“Well, like I said, when I got back to the loft Sunday night I apologized to Andrea,” Strickland said. “I brought her a couple of gifts, a book and some flowers, and I said I was sorry.”
“Were you? Or were you just saying you were sorry?”
“Probably both. I didn’t have anywhere to go. And we talked about the stress of the business and how we’d grown apart and that’s when Andrea brought up climbing Mount Rainier.”
“Out of the blue?”
“Yes.”
Tracy wasn’t sure she was buying it.
Strickland continued. “I was surprised because I didn’t think she enjoyed climbing it the first time. She said it would be something for us to do together, that it would help our marriage.”
“But you didn’t want to?”
“Initially, I said I’d think about it, but only because I didn’t want to start another fight.”
“When did you start to think about the possibility of pushing Andrea off the mountain?”
Again, Montgomery remained silent.
“The route Andrea wanted to take wasn’t popular. More people died on that route than any other. I began to think that could work.”
“What could work?” She wanted Strickland to say it.
“It was just a thought, you know? Like, what if she fell?”
“When did you start to think about it seriously?”
“When Devin brought it up.”
Tracy tried not to pause and give Montgomery time to stop the interview. “Devin brought up the subject of killing Andrea?”
“One night, in bed, she said, ‘You do know all your problems would be solved if you could just get access to the trust funds.’”
“When was this?”
“It was some time after, maybe a month?”
“Where were you?”
“In a hotel in Seattle; we’d taken a trip to avoid being seen.”
“Tell me what she said, exactly.”
“Just what I told you. She said that the bank wouldn’t prosecute me if I paid back the loan, that what they really wanted was their money, but I already knew that so I said, ‘That’s great, but Andrea won’t let me use it.’”
“And she said, ‘What happens to the money if anything happens to Andrea?’”
“Did you know?” Tracy asked.
“No. I’d never seen the trust documents. But I knew Andrea had no relatives, and Oregon is a community property state.”
“So what happened then?”
“I found a copy of the trust documents in the house, and from my reading, if anything happened to Andrea, the money would go to me under community property laws—unless she had a will, which I didn’t know but doubted.”
“Did you tell Devin what you’d found out?”
“Yes.”