“Then what does he think happened to her?”
A rhythmic thumping and metallic clang drew Tracy’s attention to the sliding-glass door, which was open a crack. Construction equipment worked in the vacant dirt lot next door. With all the construction in downtown Seattle, she recognized the sound of a machine pounding a pier into the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Orr said. “They’re building another apartment complex.”
“That’s all right,” Tracy said. “As I was saying, the ranger thinks it’s much more likely Andrea walked off the mountain early that morning.”
Orr didn’t immediately respond. Again, Tracy would have expected a relative to have some reaction to the news—elation, hope, greater concern. Orr finally said, “But you don’t know what happened to her?”
“What the ranger is having a more difficult time understanding is how Andrea could have gotten off the mountain without any help.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he believes it’s certainly possible Andrea descended the mountain on her own, but if she did, she would have needed transportation to get away.”
“But this is just speculation, right? He doesn’t really know.”
“It could be,” Tracy said. “But he’s pretty certain she walked off the mountain.”
“Then, perhaps she rented a car and left it someplace,” Orr said.
“Unlikely,” Fields said. “Rental car agreements are easy to trace. We did a search for her name and the name Lynn Hoff, but didn’t get any hits.”
At the mention of the name, which Tracy had not wanted to use this early in the conversation, she thought she noticed a flicker of recognition in Orr’s eyes, though it could have been recognition of the name from their earlier conversation. Wanting to retake control of the interview, she jumped back in. “Have you heard that name before?” Tracy asked. “Lynn Hoff?”
“No, I don’t believe I have,” Orr said. “Who is she?”
“The ranger believes that to get off the mountain, Andrea would have required some assistance, someone with a car.”
“And you think it was this Lynn Hoff,” Orr said.
“No,” Tracy said. “Lynn Hoff was an alias Andrea used.”
“An alias? What for?”
“To get a Washington driver’s license and to open bank accounts.”
“Maybe a friend helped her then,” Orr said, hands in her lap but picking at a fingernail.
“We considered that,” Tracy said. “But Andrea didn’t have many friends. In fact, according to the people I’ve spoken to, including you, Andrea really only had one friend—a woman by the name of Devin Chambers.”
“Have you spoken to her?” Orr asked.
Again, Tracy watched carefully for any sign Orr was familiar with the name, but she did not get an immediate read. “We don’t think she would have been inclined to assist Andrea,” Tracy said.
Orr seemed to be having difficulty swallowing. “Why not?”
“We’ve learned some things about Devin Chambers in our investigation; she appears to have been having an affair with Andrea’s husband. She also appears to have tried to take the money in Andrea’s trust fund.”
“That’s terrible,” Orr said. “She should be arrested. Have you located her?”
“She left Portland around the same time Andrea disappeared,” Fields said. “She told her employer she was returning home to the East Coast, but that never happened.”
“We traced her to a motel in Renton, Washington,” Tracy said. “She’d been using the name Lynn Hoff as an alias.”
“I thought you said that was Andrea’s alias.”
“It was,” Tracy said.
“I don’t understand,” Orr said.
“It means Devin Chambers knew about the alias and about the money,” Fields said. “She’d used some of the money to try and change her appearance. We think she was going to steal the money and run.”
“Do you have her in custody? What does she have to say about it?” If Orr was acting, she was giving a plausible performance.
“Devin Chambers was the woman found in the crab pot,” Tracy said. “The one we initially thought to be Andrea. You might have seen it on the news.”
Outside, the rhythmic thumping continued. “No,” Orr said. She paused. After a moment she said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“You told me Andrea never really made any friends when she moved here,” Tracy said. “She didn’t have any parents, of course, and no siblings. We’re trying to determine who might have helped her.”
“Maybe someone she knew from Santa Monica,” Orr said. “A girlfriend from back then.”