Skyjack Page 20

  The Missing Minute, as Walker’s catch came to be called, suggests that Cooper had to have landed, at the very least, three miles farther south than what agents first thought. Using the Bureau’s old data and modern mapping techniques, Walker composed a digitally enhanced drop zone. Walker now believes Cooper landed thirty miles south of Ariel, around the town of Orchards, roughly fifteen miles from the Columbia River.

  Tom envisions a different scenario. Teetering over the night sky on the aftstairs of Flight 305, the hijacker sees the glow of city lights from Portland. He jumps. Not being able to steer the NB6 a great deal, he floats down toward the Columbia River and lands in it. He floats downriver toward Tena Bar and loses the money. Or loses some of the money. Tom does not know how. Perhaps the hijacker died of hypothermia in the Columbia and got washed out into the Pacific as the wakes of freighter boats pushed the ransom money to shore. Or perhaps the hijacker sank to the bottom of the Columbia and then got shredded in the giant blade of a passing cargo freighter, which cut up the money bag and sent two hundred packets of ransom bills floating through the water.

  Tom is not the first to arrive at this conclusion. A number of Cooper hunters spent years analyzing the case and came to believe the hijacker landed in the Columbia. One retired federal agent even went through the hassle of having the riverbed raked. But until now, nobody has been able to prove it. Tom feels he is on the verge.

  “Hey, Tom?”

  “Yes, Jerry.”

  Jerry Thomas has stepped out of his massive pickup truck. He drove five hours over the Cascades from Baker City, where he now lives, to be with us. He clutches a vintage-looking suitcase that is powder blue.

  Jerry looks different than I thought he would. I expected a hiker type with a long beard, a ponytail, dressed in microfleece made from tennis balls and late-edition hiking boots. But Jerry’s cheeks are clean shaven. He wears dark trousers, an untucked button-up that drapes over his belly. On his feet are Wal-Mart sneakers that Velcro shut; they are the only shoes Jerry can wear because of his swollen feet, one of many postcombat ailments. Jerry is a few years older than Tom, and there is silver hair under a baseball cap that says THE WALL, a memento from one of his many trips to the Vietnam War memorial. His eyes are his most noticeable feature: dark, unyielding. Drill-sergeant eyes.

  “I know you’re an archaeologist, Tom,” Jerry says, “so I brought back a coin for you I found up in the woods.”

  Jerry hands Tom the coin. It is sheathed in plastic.

  The coin is a test. Jerry is skeptical of Tom. He wants to find out how serious a scientist Tom is. Jerry knows there is no conceivable way in the universe a coin like this one could be found in the Washougal area. It’s an Asian piece, hundreds of years old and from Jerry’s coin collection. So how will Tom react? Will he respond in a glib way, look at the coin briefly and say, Oh, wow, Jerry, that’s really neat? Or will he see the markings on the coin and, in a sincere and astute way, call Jerry’s bluff?

  Tom inspects the coin. He hands the coin back.

  “I appreciate that, Jerry,” he says, “but I’m a paleontologist. The difference is that archaeologists deal with uncovering the history of people that goes back hundreds of thousands of years, and paleontologists study everything before that. We like to say, ‘We don’t have to deal with people’s problems.’ ”

  Jerry moves on. He scans Carol Abraczinskas with the drill-sergeant eyes. Carol: late thirties, bookish glasses, North Face jacket.

  Jerry moves on to Brian Ingram, scans the little boy who found the Cooper treasure. Brian is thirty-eight now. It’s hard to imagine—in Cooper lore, Brian is forever a young boy in the newspaper pictures. Photographers captured him on his knees in the sand on Tena Bar, showing agents where he found the money. He had bowl-cut hair, a toothy grin. He’s achieved what all boys dream of: finding buried treasure.

  As a grown man, Brian remains strangely youthful, as if his life peaked when he was eight and he has been trapped in that moment ever since. The toothy grin is the same, only now Brian is a bit overweight, has a goatee, and wears a jockey cap that covers thinning hair.

  Brian has been in the news recently, having auctioned off several Cooper bills.

  “Shame you had to sell those bills,” Jerry says. Alimony can be a bitch and he knows all about it.

  Brian has to think. Did Jerry use the word “alimony”? How does Jerry know the real reason Brian auctioned off those bills?

  In the lobby of the Best Western the front-desk girl peers into the screen of her phone, the silver shine of her nose ring illuminated by its glow, waiting for the next text message to appear. The guests who rent rooms here are truckers hauling freight, high school kids on prom night.

  It is late, almost midnight. We are in our War Room, which doubles as the Best Western’s complimentary breakfast room. Tom is at the head of the table, Jerry at the other. The plastic silos of cereal are behind us.

  I look out the window. A freight train rumbles by.

  “Fuck the word ‘oscillations,’ ” Tom says.

  Our conversation is about when the hijacker jumped, and the language the Northwest pilots used around the time the cabin pressure gauge began to spiral out of control. The lack of clear data bothers Tom. As a scientist, he needs exact measurements and exact terms. What does some of the vague language in the flight transcriptions mean?

  “The whole story is the ‘pressure bump,’ ” Tom says. “Are ‘oscillations’ and ‘pressure bump’ the same thing?”

  He picks up two salt shakers and a pepper shaker. He points to a crack in the table.

  “Okay,” he says. “The crack right here is the flight path.”

  He holds up the salt shaker.

  “Salt number one,” he says, “is where Cooper took off in Seattle. Salt two,” he says, “is where the FBI thinks he bailed.”

  And pepper?

  “Pepper,” he says, “is where Brian found the money.”

  Brian remembers it—or, he remembers moments. He remembers Tipper, the old fisherman who had a gray beard so long he could tuck it into his pants. Tipper showed Brian how his fishing rod worked, how the bell at the end of the rod rang when a Chinook tugged his line. Brian remembers George, the family dog, and his smelly breath. George was part timber wolf; he was a watchdog for a gas station until the Ingrams won him in a card game. George would trap Brian under his legs and lick his face and not let him go.

  He remembers his father wanting to cook up hot dogs. He remembers getting down on his knees and clearing out the sand and smoothing it out with his arm like a broom, and then his arm touched the corner of the first packet of bills.

  He wonders how he remembers these things. He was only eight.

  There is another version of the story. After Brian’s discovery was reported in the news, members of his family came forward. Brian didn’t find the money, his aunt Crystal said. It was Denise, Brian’s five-year-old cousin. Crystal Ingram went to the FBI shortly after Brian’s parents did. She was entitled to a reward too, she said.

  Himmelsbach questioned her. What evidence did she have that it was her Denise who found the Cooper bills?

  Crystal produced four additional Cooper bills.

  Asked about the four additional bills, Brian’s parents said Crystal was out for the reward and made the story up. Himmelsbach came to believe that it was Brian who actually found the money, but how could the agent really know? And how could Brian?

  My motel phone is ringing. I look out the window. It is dawn, the next morning. Who is calling? Who knows I am here?

  I roll over, pick up. Hello.

  It’s Jerry. He’s talking fast, as if he’s been up all night. He says he wants to get out of the hotel and get up to the Washougal area and get our feet moving through the woods up there and to hell with the sand tests at Tena Bar and water samples that Tom has planned for us this morning because really, what’s the point of that?

  He’s ready to go, whenever I am. Am I ready?

  I want
to go back to sleep.

  Jerry starts to complain about Tom, how he is so controlling.

  “Everyone needs to have a few beers,” Jerry says. “Get the keys out of their butts.”

  I drive with Jerry to breakfast. I’m in the backseat of his pickup and he’s got his foot on the gas, cranking his rig, blazing past the Radio Shack and Mexican strip mall taco joints and empty Main Street storefronts.

  Somewhere in the backseat is a 9-millimeter pistol Jerry claims he keeps when he camps out near the Washougal River. I look on the floor. I spot the biggest package of economy-size frankfurters I have ever seen, a case of Dr. Pepper, and the small powder blue suitcase. What’s in there?

  Brian is in the front seat. He has his headphones on. Jerry is talking to him. Brian takes off the headphones.

  “I’m going to blast something into their minds,” Jerry says. “I’ve been holding it long enough. I have to tell it to him straight.”

  “No need to be crooked,” Brian says.

  Jerry smacks his hand on the steering wheel. The louder he talks, the faster he drives.

  “Murphy’s Law,” he says. “That’s what nobody has talked about. MUUURRR-PHEEZZZ Law. What can go wrong?”

  He’s interested in the errors of the case, what mistakes the hijacker made. On every mission, at least something goes wrong.

  “Nobody has talked about that,” Jerry says. “I haven’t heard any talk about that.”

  He complains about Tom.

  “He’s too damn controlling,” Jerry says again. “I’ve spent twenty-two years out there. Today I’m going to bring it up. I’m not going to let him get away that easy. We’re asking the wrong questions to get the right answers.”

  “Jerry,” Brian says, “can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, Brian. You go ahead. You ask me anything you want.”

  “Jerry, tell me how it feels … I mean, seriously, tell me how it really feels … to know that for the last twenty-two years you’ve been up in those woods looking in the wrong place.”

  Jerry believes Cooper landed in the Washougal. But Tom is on his way to proving Cooper landed in the Columbia, several miles away. If Tom can prove his theory, he will also be proving that Jerry’s quest has been off. Way off. In a way, Tom’s science is threatening the identity and reputation Jerry has built up looking for Cooper along the Washougal all these years. Tom’s science is also threatening the theory Ralph Himmelsbach had espoused, a theory that Jerry has devoutly followed, and one that’s triggered an almost paternal relationship Jerry has formed with Himmelsbach.

  These are high and personal stakes, and the battle brewing between Tom and Jerry is becoming a fight between logic and intuition. As a scientist, Tom is looking for data to prove his case. As a former soldier, Jerry is using the raw instincts of a hunter to challenge Tom’s methods.

  In his pickup, Jerry pushes the gas. He’s getting upset.

  “If they don’t like it, fuck ’em,” Jerry says. “Can’t take a jab, shit.”

  After breakfast, I ride with Tom, metallurgist Alan Stone, and Carol to Tena Bar. Tom’s minivan was special ordered to come with power outlets. His laptop is plugged in and propped up. Tom watches the computer screen and follows our movements via satellite. One eye is on the road, the other on the virtual road on the laptop. Tom is anxious to get there on time because a local television station will meet us at Tena Bar, and a documentary crew from National Geographic.

  Tom looks in the rearview mirror. He fixes his hair into place.

  “For those of us who haven’t been on TV much, you take pictures of us and we’ll take pictures of you,” he says.

  Noticeably missing from Tom’s team is Jerry Warner (Georger), who had referred him to Larry Carr at the FBI. Before the trip, there was a falling-out. Tom’s issue was confidentiality. After his discovery of silver on the bills, he e-mailed a copy of his microscopic scan to Warner, who posted it on the Drop Zone website. Tom felt the leak was a violation of trust. According to Tom, that’s why Warner chose not to come.

  Warner’s story is different. He says he lost confidence in Tom’s judgment and scientific methods. He felt Tom was more concerned with attracting attention to himself and his role in the D.B. Cooper investigation than with executing his assignment.

  “We were asked to analyze the money and we agreed to analyze the money–that’s it, not mug in front of any cameras,” Warner will tell me later.

  I look out the van window. I see wetlands and geese. Tom tracks our position on his laptop.

  “We’re getting into the holy land here,” he says.

  Tena Bar is private property. The land belongs to the Fazio family, who run a sand and livestock business along the Columbia River.

  We pull into the driveway.

  Tacked to the welcome sign at the Fazio Brothers Ranch is the scalp of a bull. Behind the sign are the scruffy hides and angular joints of cattle grazing in pens.

  We pass an old house. A man in jeans and no shirt comes to the door. He waves us on.

  I smell manure. Fazio Brothers backhoes and Fazio Brothers dump trucks are parked along the cattle pens. Strapped to one truck, a carcass hangs by the hooves. Ranch hands hack away at the muscle.

  “Okay, folks,” Tom says. “We are in situ.” That’s science talk. It means we’re in the field. He parks the car in front of the sign.

  TENA BAR–MEMBERS ONLY.

  Brian gets out of Jerry’s truck. Slowly, he snakes down the path and through the gate, careful not to snag himself on a rusted nail. He sees the old fishing shack that belonged to Tipper, and he remembers the stinky breath of his dog, George, who sprinted off down the beach on the day they first arrived here.

  Brian wishes he’d never found the money, after what it did to his family. The Cooper Curse, as the Ingrams call it, started a few minutes after Brian’s parents, Dwayne and Patricia, turned in the old money to the feds.

  Your lives will change. Those were Ralph Himmelsbach’s words.

  Their lives did change.

  They did not get rich. In the Bureau office in Portland, moments after they turned in the evidence, Himmelsbach went to check on the rewards they were entitled to. Unfortunately, the rewards had all expired. The Ingrams did not take the news well.

  The Ingrams also didn’t like getting attention from federal agents, one of whom followed Patricia into the bathroom. The Ingrams were not seeking publicity, but federal agents decided to hold a press conference to announce the find. Within hours, Dwayne and Patricia and Brian Ingram were national figures.

  The Ingrams were more interested in the Cooper bills. As collectibles, they could be worth a lot of money, far more than any reward.

  Himmelsbach did not give them back. The feds had to keep the money as evidence. The lab at Quantico would be testing it for fingerprints.

  The Ingrams sued the FBI to get the bills back. After six years in court, the judge in the case finally awarded them half of what they found, much of which is in fragments.

  The media attention was poison. First, Brian’s father got a strange call. He asked who the caller was.

  “Nan,” she said. “Nan and Tap. Dwayne, we’re your grandparents.”

  Dwayne didn’t know he had grandparents. He didn’t even know who his own father was.

  Nan and Tap invited Dwayne and his family to San Francisco, where they lived in a nice house. Technically, they were not his grandparents—they were his stepfather’s parents—but they had cared for Dwayne when he was a baby. Dwayne took a trip to visit them, but once his stepbrothers found out that Dwayne had gone to see their parents, they told him to never talk to Nan and Tap again.

  Later, Brian and his mother were out of town, visiting friends in California, when Dwayne came home to find their house in Vancouver was on fire. Everything the Ingrams owned, all the clothes and furniture that Patricia had found for her family in church basements was destroyed. Dwayne and Pat had come to Vancouver looking for good schools, clean air, and a good place
to raise Brian, better than the Oklahoma hillbilly towns where they were from. Now, that dream had burned to the ground.

  Inspecting the fire, cops showed up.

  “You Dwayne Ingram?” one said.

  He nodded.

  The cops cuffed him on the spot.

  Later, in the station house, Dwayne learned that he and Patricia were late on a car payment. When they left Oklahoma and moved to Vancouver, they forgot to notify the bank, and a warrant was issued for Dwayne’s arrest. In Oklahoma, officers saw his name on television after the Cooper money had been found and recognized it from the warrant list. Dwayne had been arrested for stealing his own car.

  That night, television stations ran the news. In California, Patricia saw one headline: BOY SENDS FATHER TO PRISON.

  The Ingrams moved out of Vancouver.

  “I told you that money was cursed,” Patricia would tell Dwayne.

  Brian enrolled in a new school, which was unfortunate. After finding the Cooper ransom, he had been instantly popular in his class in Vancouver. Dwayne started drinking heavily and doing drugs, not coming home. Brian doesn’t think it’s fair to blame his father’s addictions on the unfortunate turns of fate that followed the discovery of the Cooper bills. The drama didn’t help any, though.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  That’s Jerry.

  “I’m not getting under everyone’s skin too bad, am I?” he says.

  I lie. Of course he isn’t.

  “Well, I’ve been trying.”

  The sky is a white board. The fog is rolling in. The Columbia is too wide to swim across, but narrow enough to see smoke curling out from chimneys on the far bank.

  Brian sloshes around in the sand. He doesn’t know where he found the money. He was too young, just can’t remember.

  It starts to rain. I ask Jerry where his coat is.

  “I don’t wear coats,” he says. “I can’t feel anything.”