Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper (35 page)

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.