Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper (37 page)

“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?