Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper (38 page)

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 installing 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.

He remembers the faces. Tipper, the old fisherman; George, his dog with the smelly breath; and the feeling of the sand against his forearm.

But as he got older, Brian says, he wondered about these memories. How much of what he knew was really what he knew? Were his memories his own? Or was his mind imbued with the stories of those around him? How much can one remember at eight?

He wondered about his parents. Did they lie to him? Was his doubt natural? Was he the boy who became famous around the world for actually finding buried treasure? Or was he a fraud?

He didn’t think so. But how could he be sure?

Before he sold the Cooper bills, Brian approached his parents. He asked his mom, Patricia, if he really found the money. He did, she told him. His father told him the same.

Still, Brian was unsure. When his grandmother got sick, Brian went to Florida to visit her in the hospital. His cousin Denise was there at the hospital, too. It was Denise’s mother, Crystal, who had always claimed Denise was the one who found the Cooper money. Brian hadn’t seen Denise in years.

Brian remembered how close he and Denise had been as kids. They watched movies together on the couch. They built a fort underneath the sheet on his bed.

Brian felt that part of his recovery from drug addiction and other turmoil in his life was to be honest with himself and those around him. He was willing to accept the fact that he wasn’t the boy who found the money, if that was true.

In the hospital, Brian pulled Denise aside. He asked her what happened. Was he the one who found the money in the sand? Or was she?

Denise didn’t want to talk about it.

“We both know what happened, Brian,” she said.

But he really doesn’t.

In Seattle, the evidence is waiting for us in the Bureau field office. Special Agent Carr has spread out more files, photos, the parachute canopy, the clip-on tie.

Tom places a loupe on his eye. He examines the reserve parachute first. The canopy is watermelon pink. Tom inspects each incision. He counts the number of cut shroud lines.

That’s strange, he thinks. Five shroud lines are cut. According to the Bureau file, agents first discovered that only three shroud lines had been cut during the hijacking. Who cut the other two? Did Bureau agents snip them as souvenirs?

The clip-on tie is next for inspection. Tom uses sticky tape and presses it against the polyester fabric to collect pollen samples. Despite its age, the pollen he finds could tell him where the tie has been.

He studies the fabric under his loupe. He rolls his eyes upward and inspects the clip of the clip-on tie. The hook is painted white. It is stripped in spots.

Nothing here.

He scans the fat part of the tie. Under the loupe, Tom’s eye combs the polyester fields of microscopic fibers. How incredible it would be to stumble upon a flake of dandruff! A hair follicle!

Tom thinks of the dandruff and hair on his own computer keyboard back on his ranch in Arizona. He is always amazed at how much of it finds its way into the keys and how annoying it is to clean it all out. How does so much gunk get in there? As he thinks about this, he moves on from the fat part of the tie to the fake knot of the tie. Then he gets the idea.

The feds missed it! In the lab at Quantico, Bureau scientists looked for forensic matter
on
the tie. Where they didn’t look is where a good DNA sample may have been hiding all these years.
In
the tie.

A brief argument ensues. Metallurgist Alan Stone isn’t sure they should do this. If they break open the knot of the tie to extract samples, Tom and the Team could be criminally liable, right? Isn’t this tampering with evidence? Stone can’t go to jail. He has a wife. He’d have to hire a lawyer. At the very least, Tom and the Team need to protect themselves: get approvals, sign forms. They can’t rush into this.

I offer the position, unsolicited, that Tom and the Team move now and fast and quietly. Our window is small. An approval could take weeks.

I’m getting pushy. We aren’t coming back here, folks. Open up the sucker. Get the damn sample. And let’s get out of here.

Larry Carr agrees. As official Cooper case agent, he’s been stymied by the Bureau’s watch-your-ass-at-all-times attitude. Besides, Carr already received permission to have the Cooper money delivered to Tom for analysis. Isn’t allowing Tom to open up the tie (and potentially destroying it) the same thing?

It isn’t. At least not technically. But it’s a good enough rationale for Carr, which is good enough for Tom, which is good enough for Carol. Alan folds. The scientists go to work.

“Is there a light here somewhere?” Tom says.

“Turn that projector on,” Alan says.

“Don’t talk as much if you can.”

“Don’t open it up too much.”

“
WE GOT GUNK.
”

“Wait, wait, Tom,” Carol says. “There, I got a light. Seriously. Where do you want it?”

“
WE GOT GUNK.
”

“Whoa.”

“There’s some hair.”

“Hold on. I don’t have the focal … oh yeah, I see.”

“Oh yeah, there’s some hair in there.”

“I don’t think we got the hair we saw.”

“Pull it apart.”

“You see the hair?”

“Nope.”

“Ah yeah.”

“And some dandruff flakes.”

“Hold it, shine it in there.”

“
I SEE GUNK!
The tie is loaded!”

“So that ties it all together.”

“Look at this cheap tie.”

“I can photograph into that.”

“That’s good. One more.”

“I got a gazillion megapixels.”

“Hold it right there.”

“Oh yeah. We be the bad D.B. Cooper investigators. Yeah, baby, yeah. Show me the money.”

“It’s in the Columbia.”

“How do they look?”

“There’s obviously stuff in there.
Mmmmmm.
”

“You got the hair?”

“There’s a hair in there.”

“At least one. Now we got some horsepower.
Yeah, baby, yeah
. We be the bad D.B. Cooper investigators.…”