Orr led Tracy and Fields along a dirt path lined with river stones and railroad ties, the only sound the trickling of the stream and the buzz of unseen insects. Another ten yards and Tracy saw a wooden walk, a bridge over a stream leading to a cabin nestled among the pines. Forest-green with a red door, the cabin sat on a foundation of river stones, with a chimney made of the same rocks protruding above the roof. At first glance, the cabin looked like something out of a fairy tale where a gnome or elf might live. It made Tracy think of the Alki Point Lighthouse, and Dan’s desire that Tracy have a fairy-tale wedding. It also made her think the cabin was a perfect place for someone whom the world had crapped on to run and hide.
After crossing the bridge, they stepped down to dirt, then climbed two steps to a small porch. The clunk of their shoes echoed on the wood. Orr knocked on the door. She looked like she’d aged during the drive, like someone about to commit an unspeakable betrayal. Noise inside the cabin indicated someone moving about. Instinctively, Tracy reached across her body and gripped the butt of her gun. Orr didn’t wait for the door to open. She pushed it in and called out, “Andrea?”
Andrea Strickland had been smiling when Orr opened the door. That smile fell quickly, and her expression changed from bewilderment to the purest expression of pain and resignation.
“I’m sorry,” Penny Orr said.
So was Tracy. She now understood what Orr had been alluding to, why Andrea Strickland had been so desperate to get away.
The inside of the small cabin looked like an independent bookstore that had outgrown its space. Stacks of books cluttered the furniture, the kitchen table, and the bench seat beneath leaded-glass windows that distorted the view outside. They filled crates in the corners of the room, and overflowed bookshelves. Tracy saw hardbacks and paperbacks of every genre, novels and nonfiction, autobiographies.
Tracy asked Andrea Strickland and Penny Orr to sit on a two-cushion couch while she went to the bedroom closet to secure an old, 12-gauge, Crack Barrel Shotgun, the kind her father had used in shooting competitions. The gun was not loaded, and it didn’t look as though it had been fired anytime recently, though it was kept in good condition. She also took a box of shells from the closet shelf. She handed the shotgun and shells to Fields, who set the shells on the mantel and leaned the barrel against the river-rock fireplace hearth. Tracy moved a stack of books from the window seat and sat directly across from the two women. The two-room cabin consisted of the living room and a kitchen area with a tiny wood-burning stove and a refrigerator. In the back, the bedroom was not much bigger than the queen-size wrought-iron bed. In the living room, two wooden posts extended from beneath the floor to wood ceiling trusses, and the room retained the smell of burned wood from the blackened fireplace.
“Andrea inherited her love of reading from my mother,” Orr said with a sad smile. She gripped Andrea’s hand. “Grandma would come here and read three books in a day. She wore out the library in Independence, but she didn’t like having to return the books, so she bought crates at used bookstores and brought them up here.”
Andrea Strickland did not raise her gaze from the bearskin rug on the wood-plank floor.
“It looks like a wide variety,” Tracy said. “Do you have a favorite genre?”
Strickland glanced at Tracy, then back at the floor. “No,” she said softly.
“How far along are you?” Tracy asked. She’d noticed the telltale bump beneath Andrea’s stretch pants.
Andrea lifted her head again. “Just a little more than six months now.”
“And your husband doesn’t know.”
Andrea shook her head. “No.”
Andrea Strickland was not crazy or vindictive. She had, however, been desperate to get away from an abusive husband intent on killing her, and, unknowingly, her unborn child.
“Andrea, your aunt didn’t want to tell us where you were. I found the birth certificate for Lynn Hoff. I figured it out,” Tracy said.
Strickland nodded. Orr squeezed her niece’s hand.
“I think you can imagine we have some questions, Andrea, about what happened. Will you speak to me?”
“Does she need a lawyer?” Orr asked.
That was always the $64,000 question for the witness and the police officer. Strickland was not in police custody so her right to an attorney under the Fifth Amendment had not been triggered. She had also not been charged with a crime, which meant her Sixth Amendment right had also not been triggered. Given the location of the cabin and the condition of the Jeep, Tracy now had serious doubts Strickland could have killed Devin Chambers or Megan Chen. She’d faked her own death, but to do so was neither a federal nor a state crime. She had not illegally recovered any insurance proceeds, nor was she seeking to avoid paying state or federal taxes. She’d used a fake identification to open bank accounts, but not to commit forgery or fraud, since the money belonged to her. As for defaulting on the bank loans and the lease, her husband had admitted to forging her name on the personal guarantees. Whether her separate property was susceptible to those creditors remained a civil, not a criminal, issue.
In other words, Tracy had no basis to arrest her.