SKYJACK: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper

by Geoffrey Gray

  “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.”

  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 cam
ouflage. 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.