Skyjack: The Hunt for D. B. Cooper (36 page)

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.”