Skyjack Page 21

  Brian looks into the water. He sees specks of gold in the sand.

  “Pyrite,” Jerry says.

  “Isn’t that fool’s gold?” Brian says.

  Tom walks down the path wearing white gloves. He holds orange flags to mark locations, glass jars to collect samples. He clutches the fishing rod baited with a packet of dollar bills. He watches the water. He is disappointed. His Silver-in-the-Sand theory depends on a strong muscular wake—something that could push the Cooper bills from the river bottom onto the beach. The wake here couldn’t push a paper boat onto Tena Bar. It is too weak.

  Tom walks down to the wet sand with the fishing pole. He casts his packet of bills into the river. Under the water, the bills in the packet fan out like the fins of an exotic fish.

  He calls out to Carol to make a note. “Money does not float.”

  Jerry is bored. He tosses a piece of driftwood into the water. He watches the wood float into the current and down the river. Then it stops. The wood hovers in the water, a natural trap.

  “This is where they found that money,” Jerry booms.

  Tom rushes over.

  Brian looks down the beach to get his bearings.

  “Is this the place, Brian?”

  Brian isn’t sure. It feels right.

  Tom stomps away. Feelings don’t count. Feelings don’t get published.

  “We have to get back to basics here,” Tom says.

  We caravan into the hills. Now it’s time to collect samples from the Washougal River. We pass the motels where Jerry would spend a few dollars to take a shower after spending months looking for Cooper in the woods. Jerry talks about family, old memories. He gets sentimental. Before our trip, Jerry called his mother. He got her answering machine.

  Is this a mistake? Have I got this on right? You have reached Doris Thomas. If you leave a message, I’ll call you back. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. I know you called.

  Then Jerry went to her grave, cleaned up the site, put flowers there. His mother died years ago. He keeps paying her cell phone bill so he can hear her voice whenever he wants. His way of keeping her alive.

  My cell phone is ringing. It’s Tom. He’s run out of gas.

  “Oh, I ought to jap slap his ass,” Jerry says. “If I had my way I would just leave him right there.”

  Jerry slaps his wheel.

  “I mean, man!”

  That such a brilliant self-taught scientist like Tom does not possess enough common sense to check his own gas tank is all the evidence Jerry needs: Tom will never solve the Cooper case.

  I ride with Tom to the Washougal. We follow Jerry’s pickup as it climbs up back roads, past hilly farms.

  Tom sees houses lined up next to one another. He sees American flags on the lawn.

  “Where are these woods?” he says. “This looks like suburban Pittsburgh! You have to fend off the dogs on chains!”

  Jerry pulls over. He gets out of his truck. He walks over to Tom’s van, cranes his neck in the window.

  Tom is hunched over his laptop. His GPS monitoring system is not functioning. The satellite signal is too weak where we are.

  “Where am I?” Tom says. “Where am I, Jerry, in the scheme of things?”

  “Little Washougal. Want to get higher?”

  “How do we get there? Show me how to get higher.”

  “Well, the farther up we go, the higher up we get.”

  We unload the equipment—test tubes, stopwatch, fishing pole, and money packets. We follow Jerry down a dirt path under a small bridge. We are at the bank of a creek. The afternoon sun breaks through the tree branches. The running water glistens gold.

  Tom reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a stack of money: twenty $1 bills. Attached is a laminated note.

  REWARD IF FOUND!

  This label is part of an investigation of the 1971 DB Cooper hijacking.… You may keep the attached money and we will give you an extra 100 dollars if you call in the location.

  He chucks the bills in the water. This packet of bills is perhaps the ultimate test that will confirm or destroy Jerry’s theory. If the bills are found far downriver or somewhere along the Columbia, then the Washougal is a likely possibility for Cooper’s true drop zone. If Jerry comes back here a month later and finds Tom’s packet of bills under a rock downstream, it will suggest his theory is bunk.

  We drive higher. Jerry pulls over on an old logging road.

  “You got black sands all up in through there, Tom,” Jerry says.

  He points.

  “And this entire area right here is covered in wait-a-minute vines,” he says.

  And what are wait-a-minute vines?

  “Vines that when you see them, you go, I better wait a minute.”

  Tom walks to the water’s edge. The Washougal current is stronger here. Tom is surprised. Maybe it was possible for the Washougal to carry the Cooper bills down to Tena Bar. Maybe Jerry is onto something.

  The forest around us drips with lime green moss and shadows. The colors are emerald and parrot greens. The moss coats the tree branches.

  Jerry is looking into the water downstream.

  “Hey, Tom, would a periwinkle help you?”

  “What’s a periwinkle?”

  “It’s like a cocoon with a worm in it.”

  “Can’t think of how that would be useful offhand, Jerry.”

  Jerry comes over and opens his chapped hand. He shows him the periwinkle.

  Tom calls over Carol.

  “Note that there are snails in the water,” he says. “Many snails. Thanks, Jerry.”

  It is dusk. It is time for dinner. Jerry is behind the wheel of his monster pickup. Brian is in the front seat, I’m in the back with all the hot dogs. I rummage around. Where is that 9-millimeter pistol Jerry was talking about?

  “Brian, I’d like to ask you a favor,” Jerry says.

  “Okay, Jerry,” Brian says.

  “My daughter works over here at the Shucks in town.”

  “Okay. Shucks?”

  “Yeah, Shucks.”

  “Okay.”

  “Well, what I wanted to ask you was, would you meet her? She would love it. I mean, it would really mean a lot to her.”

  To Jerry, Brian and the Ingram family are Cooper royalty, historic figures in the case. True celebs.

  “No problem, Jerry,” Brian says. “I’d love to meet your daughter.”

  “Now, it’s a bit … complicated.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I haven’t spoken to her in almost two years.”

  Brian stares straight ahead into the windshield.

  “I don’t know if she’ll talk to me, but I know with you here, I know she will. I don’t know if she’ll tell me hello or to go fuck myself—even that would be something. At least that’s talking.”

  It is a long ride into town.

  “Jerry, I don’t want to offend you or anything, but this is kind of weird,” Brian says. He wants to know what Jerry did to his daughter. Why isn’t she talking to him?

  “Now be honest,” Brian says.

  Drugs, Jerry says. Her husband got arrested for growing pot and spent time in jail. Jerry’s daughter suspected he was the one who turned her husband in to the police.

  “Did you turn him in?”

  “No, no I didn’t,” Jerry says.

  He rants on about his daughter, how she isn’t doing things the right way.

  “I’m not scared of her,” Jerry says.

  “Can you tell me something about her? This way I can say Jerry’s told me about what you like to do. This way I have something to talk to her about.”

  “Her name is Deanna. But she goes by Charlene. Her mother named her Deanna. I named her Charlene. I love her. I named her.”

  I call Tom in the van behind us. I tell him to pull over. We are going to meet Jerry’s daughter in a place called Shucks, whatever that is.

  Shucks is an auto-parts retailer. Brian, Jerry, and I get out of Jerry’s truck and follow
him in.

  A line has formed at the cash register. I open the door for Jerry.

  I turn. I see her.

  Charlene has long black hair and a long face. She has hearing aids in both ears. She wears no makeup. She is missing part of a tooth and when she sees us her hand goes up to cover it.

  “Hi, honey,” Jerry says.

  Charlene does not speak, cannot speak.

  A customer steps into line. She rings him up and grits her teeth and tries not to look at Jerry.

  “I’m at work. I can’t talk to you.”

  Jerry speaks to her in a slow and careful tone, as if she is pointing a gun at him.

  “Honey, I’d like to introduce you to someone,” he says. “Honey, this is Brian Ingram.”

  Charlene inspects Brian: Male, thirty-eight, cargo pants, goatee.

  “Honey, this is the boy that found the money.”

  Charlene takes another look.

  “You’re the boy who found that money?”

  Brian flashes the same toothy grin he had as a boy.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Yeah, honey. We’re on a team with a bunch of scientists and it’s really been interesting. Just fantastic,” Jerry says.

  She looks at her father and the words I hate you I hate you I fucking hate you twinkle in her dark eyes.

  “I’m at work, I can’t talk at work,” she says.

  “Okay, then,” Jerry says. He storms off, leaving Brian and me standing in the store.

  Charlene looks at us. Her chest is quivering. Her eyes tear. I think she is going to scream.

  “Nothing you can do,” Jerry says, pulling himself up into his truck.

  I ask him how he feels. Is he happy he was able to see Charlene?

  “No. I am not happy. You saw it. She was in a cold sweat. Sweat on the nose. And I saw that man behind her. You saw how he was fidgeting. She was high.”

  I didn’t notice this.

  “You see, she called me about a year ago needing money to pay her electricity bill. And I called her husband and he said he didn’t need the money. So you see it’s like, Who is lying here? And the next thing I know, click.”

  In Jerry’s passenger window, Tom appears. A croissant is dangling from his mouth. He’s gnawing on it, the anxiety fueling his appetite again.

  “We’re just getting ourselves together to meet your daughter,” Tom says.

  Jerry is ready to drive off. Tom is confused.

  “I guess she’s not coming out to play with us,” he says.

  The bar at the Chinese restaurant is lined with hunters in camouflage. Inside the dining room, we eye the laminated menus.

  “We learned something today,” Tom says.

  The Washougal is not as powerful a river as he thought. There is almost no chance it could have carried the Cooper ransom to Tena Bar. Jerry’s theory is a virtual impossibility.

  Jerry protests. The Washougal is plenty powerful, he says. Especially when there are heavy rains and it floods. The river we saw was not the river the Washougal can be.

  “Jerry, you and I were never blood brothers in any generation,” Tom says.

  Jerry does not speak.

  “You got the woods down, Jerry. It’s the people part,” Tom says.

  Jerry peers out from the menu, gives Tom a stare down.

  The talk turns to eating food that is bad for you, like what we ordered, and people we all know who have heart problems.

  Jerry has heart problems, he says.

  “Knowing Jerry, he would have a heart attack in the middle of the woods, and nobody would be around to help him,” Tom says.

  He’s laughing. We’re all laughing.

  “And he’d keel over and die in the woods … and he’d become D.B. Cooper! His ultimate dream would be fulfilled!”

  Jerry smirks. He knows he is looking in the right place. When the meal is over he looks at his fortune cookie.

  “YOU WILL OBTAIN YOUR GOAL IF YOU MAINTAIN YOUR COURSE,” it says.

  On the way back to the hotel, we pass Shucks again. I see Charlene. She is outside, taking a smoke break.

  “Go talk to her, Jerry,” Brian says.

  I push him, too. The last encounter was a disaster.

  Jerry puts the truck in park. He follows Charlene back inside. I run back over to Tom’s van to tell him what is happening.

  Tom makes a John Wayne voice. He’s goofing around.

  “Hell, bitch, you better come on out,” Tom says.

  “Tom, that’s not funny,” Carol says.

  My cell phone is ringing. It’s Jerry.

  “She wants to meet the team,” he says.

  The store is empty. Almost closing time.

  We all go inside. Tom reaches over to shake Charlene’s hand.

  “I’m sure your dad didn’t want us to tell you this but he was … he was crying, literally, in tears at dinner,” Tom says.

  Charlene is not moved.

  “He’s not who you think he is,” she says. “He’s a lying, manipulating … You don’t know what he’s done. He’s threatened me.”

  Jerry is standing tall, his back stiff, as if lining up for roll call.

  “He wants to be famous,” Charlene says. “He wants to be a hero.”

  Tom asks Charlene if she likes the woods as much as Jerry.

  Charlene closes her mouth and shakes her head no no no.

  “I was grounded to the woods,” she says. “When I was fourteen, for using hairspray.”

  “It was the watch,” Jerry says.

  “I almost blew up the entire forest. I was trying to use kerosene for the lantern and my dad insisted I do it the redneck way, by siphoning the gas out of the truck. I couldn’t see and I had a candle and …”

  A terror creeps over her face.

  “The whole truck was on fire,” she says. “I tried to put it out with a cup. I thought I’d get spanked for that one.”

  Charlene looks at us as if we have arrived from another planet to save her.

  “The caves,” she says with a shiver. “I still have the scars.”

  The next morning, I follow Jerry out to his pickup. He places the powder blue suitcase in the back. We are driving to Seattle to examine the physical evidence in the case. Jerry isn’t coming. He is scared of cities and has to get home. His wife Shelly’s horse died last night. He needs to dig the grave. He’ll have to rent a backhoe.

  “It was a big old horse,” he says.

  I think about the way Charlene looked at him, what she said. He’s a lying, manipulating …

  Jerry claims to have been trekking into the woods for the past twenty-two years to hunt for Cooper’s money, but how can we prove he was there all the times he says he was? And if he is making some of it up, why? What is he really looking for?

  He hops into his rig. He turns the keys over. I ask when he’s coming back into the woods.

  “Summer,” he says. “The trees change, everything changes.”

  Brian and I drive to Seattle in my rental. A few miles up the highway, I ask him about Jerry. Is it possible he’s making it all up?

  Brian can’t say. But it is strange how much Jerry knows about the case.

  Like what?

  Like the reason Brian sold his Cooper bills. Jerry used the word alimony. How did he know Brian needed to sell the Cooper bills to pay his first wife?

  Brian met her in high school, at a roller skating rink. She was shy, religious. He’d push himself on her.

  Not until we’re married, she would say.

  He has memories of how things went wrong, like the time she visited when she was in college and he had enrolled in the Army. He was training to become a medic, and they had been away from each other for so long. Finally, they were together and alone in his barrack at Fort Benning and he was touching her and she was touching him back, and when they embraced he told her, though not very convincingly, “We don’t have to do this.”

  Or the time after the wedding, after Kara was born, when he was instal
ling electrical and sewer components for mobile homes around Oklahoma. One night, he was at a friend’s trailer for dinner, had too many beers and got a little drunk, heard something he didn’t want to hear, pushed over the table, nearly got into a fight and disappeared.

  For months, he was missing. He’d driven into Oklahoma City and pulled over at another friend’s house. He knew there would be crank there. He liked crystal meth best. Hillbilly crack. It was the cheapest to buy and lasted the longest. There was cocaine in the house, too, and if someone offered it to him, he would cut it up and snort it. Or drop acid. One night he took thirteen tabs. He was so high he wanted to get naked and ride the moon. Or kill himself. He was on a bender. He was awake for twenty-three days once. It was an eerie and ugly existence, living with other addicts as they moved in and out of the house, peering down at the street, paranoid, thinking the cars that were passing by were undercover cops.

  His parents couldn’t find him. His wife didn’t know where he was.

  Some nights he was home. He’d escape from the drug house and drive his car to a spot behind his home that was just far enough so his wife couldn’t see him if she stepped out the door, but close enough so when the lights were on in the living room he could the silhouettes of her and the baby girl as they moved around. He did not have the courage—to sober up, to tell them what had been bothering him, what sent him on the drug binge. Six months passed before he finally knocked on the door.

  Where had he been? His wife thought he had deserted them. The girl was crying. She had filed for divorce, she told him, and he never came home again.

  Brian can talk about it now, because he’s proud about the way he was able to stomach the pain of drug addiction, to beat it, to work again. He’s been on the lines in front of a sewing machine. He’s worked in the freezing cold to build pipelines. His specialty now is roofing. He’s also built a mausoleum to Cooper, collecting every artifact he can find that’s related to the hijacking: T-shirts, toys, matchbooks. He hopes the hijacker is never caught. He enjoys the speculation. It’s also better for his investment. The longer the case goes unsolved, the more his bills might be worth.

  The interstate to Seattle is a blinking mess of indoor water parks, Chinese buffets, Indian casinos, and porn shops that border the military bases. I ask Brian to recall every detail he can think of about the day he found the money.