“Ditto,” Kins said.
Hicks stood an inch or so shorter than Tracy, perhaps five foot nine, but with a wiry build, meaty forearms, and prominent calves. His hairline had receded, which was ironic because hair seemed to cover every other visible part of his body. A five o’clock shadow and tufted eyebrows that sloped in toward the bridge of his nose gave him a perpetually disappointed look.
“Come on back,” Hicks said, inviting them behind a wood counter to an office not much bigger than a child’s bedroom. A wooden desk reminded Tracy of the teachers’ desks at Cedar Grove Middle School. On it rested a lone manila file.
“When was this cabin built?” Tracy asked.
“The station?” Hicks said. “1929. They built them to last back then, though without many amenities.” He stepped behind the desk. “You have the picture?” he asked, clearly interested in getting to the bottom of the mystery.
Tracy opened her leather saddlebag and pulled out the picture of Lynn Hoff’s driver’s license. This was not a photocopy but a five-by-eight glossy Faz had obtained from DOL. She handed it across the desk. Hicks put on a pair of cheaters, held up the picture to consider it, then methodically opened the file on his desk, pulled out a second photograph, and held the two side by side, eyes shifting back and forth between them. His head did that slow shake of someone who couldn’t believe he’d had one pulled over on him.
“That’s her,” he said, jaw taut. “I don’t know who Lynn Hoff is, but that right there is Andrea Strickland.”
He handed both photographs to Tracy and Kins. They compared the two. Though in the DOL’s photograph Strickland wore thick-framed glasses, it was not difficult to tell it was the same person.
“I have others,” Hicks said, opening a manila envelope and taking out color photographs. “Her husband provided them just about four weeks ago, when we thought she’d gone missing on the mountain.”
In one, Andrea Strickland stood on a rock, dressed in shorts and a tank top, a long-sleeve shirt tied around her waist, the immense summit of Mount Rainier rising up behind her.
“What can you tell us about that?” Tracy said.
“I can tell you she apparently caused us a lot of unnecessary aggravation and put the lives of my rangers at risk,” Hicks said, sounding like a jilted lover. “Someone who does this has to be incredibly selfish.”
Well, she’s dead, so she paid the ultimate price, Tracy wanted to say, but refrained. She and Kins were content to let Hicks vent. He had the right. Andrea Strickland had pulled one over on Hicks and his men. She’d pulled one over on everyone, except the person who’d eventually found and killed her.
Hicks swiveled his chair, which squeaked and creaked, and pointed to a tattered US Geological topo map on the wall. The area looked to be of the entire park, pocked with prominent red Xs, some circled. “The Xs mark the locations where each person still missing on the mountain was last seen. The ones circled are the bodies we’ve eventually located and recovered. Sometimes it’s a few days. Sometimes it can be months and years. Sometimes they’re never found. With the warm weather the past few years, the glaciers are receding at an unprecedented rate. We’re finding bodies of climbers gone missing for decades, and let me tell you, it never becomes routine. You’re haunted by the ones you can’t find, always second-guessing yourself, wondering if maybe they were just a few yards from where you were probing the snow, or lying in a crevasse just beneath your boots.”
Hicks opened the desk drawer, took out a permanent marker, and drew a circle around one of the Xs. He capped the pen and looked back at them. “Andrea Strickland. I don’t need names. I can plot where each climber was last seen in my sleep.” Hicks’s finger moved to the specific areas as he said them, “Near Success Cleaver, a crevasse on the Cowlitz Glacier, in the Carbon River area.” He tapped the pen on the X he had just circled. “Liberty Ridge. You know why we work so hard to get the bodies back?”
Tracy did. She’d spent twenty years looking for Sarah, though she’d known with near certainty they would find only her remains. “Closure for the families,” she said.
“Closure for the families.” Hicks nodded. “Not everyone buys our bullshit that the mountain is a beautiful final resting place for their loved ones. I don’t blame them. But it’s also closure for us. May 30, 2014, we lost six in one incident. We found three of the bodies last summer. Some years, like last year, we get lucky and don’t lose any. It’s a tough mountain and it can turn mean in a hurry. One minute the sun is out and the next it’s a whiteout and the wind is blowing eighty miles an hour. You can never predict what it might do on any given day, and that means you can never relax. That radio can go off at any moment.”
“What can you tell us about Andrea Strickland?” Tracy asked.