Bloodless

52

Over the last several minutes of Pendergast’s recitation, as the pieces came together in his mind with what he had read about D. B. Cooper, Coldmoon had grown both more fascinated — and more incredulous.

“So you’re saying this Alicia Rime is D. B. Cooper,” Coldmoon said. “The skyjacker who was never found, whose crime was never solved.”

“Bravo!” Pendergast turned to his ward. “Shall we fortify the man with a wee dram of Lagavulin?”

“Why not?”

Coldmoon noticed that, beyond a lack of emotion, Constance seemed to be projecting an unusual iciness — toward him and Pendergast both. He gratefully took the generous measure of scotch Pendergast handed him. Pendergast then poured a glass for Constance and one for himself.

Pendergast shifted once again, making himself more comfortable. “Perhaps you can pick up the thread now, Agent Coldmoon, and tell us where it leads.”

Coldmoon was tempted to decline, feeling slightly patronized. But the story was so outrageous and intriguing, and the pieces were starting to come together so quickly, that he couldn’t help himself. “Okay, let’s see. Rime got herself fired from Boeing so her later disappearance wouldn’t cause suspicion. She booked a seat on the same flight, disguised as a man, so the old scientist wouldn’t recognize her. And to throw off the later investigation. She used the name Dan Cooper.”

“Correct,” Pendergast said. “In those days, it was easy to book a flight in a fake name.”

“It was Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Once in the air, he — I mean, she — showed a stewardess an attaché case containing a phony bomb, then a note demanding two hundred thousand dollars. The idea was to make it look like a straightforward hijacking, to divert attention from what she was really after. She asked for two full sets of civilian parachutes, primary and reserve.”

Pendergast nodded. “That was to make sure the authorities didn’t sabotage the chutes — and asking for a second chute implied she might take a hostage along.”

“Right. So when the plane landed in Seattle, she collected a ransom of two hundred thousand dollars and the parachutes and ordered everyone off the flight. But she didn’t allow them to get their hand luggage.”

“Precisely,” said Pendergast.

“Let’s see...” Coldmoon thought back to the files he’d read. “Cooper demanded the pilot take her to Mexico City, with a refueling stop in Reno. That would route the plane over a vast, remote forested landscape at night. She ordered everyone into the cockpit, where they couldn’t see what she was doing. Then she opened the luggage compartments and took the briefcase she wanted.”

“Yes,” said Pendergast. “And it was noted later that many of the overhead luggage bins had been opened and their contents scattered, with items missing. She no doubt lowered the aft stairs and tossed some luggage out, again to confuse things and cover up her real target.”

“Right. So she took the briefcase and jumped.” Coldmoon shook his head. “Imagine jumping into a storm at night like that. Woman or man — doing that took serious stones.”

Pendergast sipped the Lagavulin. “The D. B. Cooper case was one of the longest unsolved cases in FBI history. It wasn’t closed until a few years ago, in fact, with no solution. Various landing areas were suggested, countless suspects developed, questioned, and abandoned. Endless computer and physical simulations were run, taking into account different surface velocities, wind speeds, altitudes — but none ever turned up a body or the money. Years later, a rotten packet of that ransom money was found in a sandbar in the Columbia River. That led many to believe he was dead.”

He looked at Coldmoon. “If you were in Cooper’s shoes... what would you have done after jumping off that plane?”

Coldmoon considered this for a moment. “The ransom money couldn’t have been spent. That’s what tripped up the Lindbergh kidnappers. He, I mean she, would have known the FBI microfilmed or marked all the bills before giving them to her. So she tossed the money into the wind, to make it look like she’d died in the fall.” He paused. “Next, I would have free-fallen as long as I dared, so their calculations of where I landed — along with the dusting of money — would throw off any searchers. And less chance of anyone spotting the chute.”

Pendergast spoke as Coldmoon took another sip of his Lagavulin. “That’s exactly what happened — with one exception. Something went wrong with the chute, and she sustained a violent impact.”

“But she didn’t die,” Coldmoon said. “Obviously. Because Dr. Quincy saved her life.”

“Precisely,” Pendergast said. “And now, for this final part of the story, we should turn to Constance. Because she got it straight from the source.”

“That interview,” Constance said after a brief pause, “was probably the final exchange I will ever have with Felicity Frost.”

“You mean Alicia Rime,” said Coldmoon. “Alias D. B. Cooper.”

Pendergast nodded. “That was the first question I had Constance ask Frost: Are you D. B. Cooper? As I’d hoped, it threw her so off guard that it was easier to get answers to the other three questions. Constance?”

She spoke quietly but quickly, as if dealing with something she wished to be rid of as fast as possible. “Miss Frost — Alicia — knew a great deal about avionics. She knew that the hijacking would precipitate a massive manhunt. The time of her jump and the location of the plane would not be known for certain, in the days before GPS. She jumped out into a moonless, stormy night, landing somewhere in the vast forests of southern Washington and northern Oregon, a huge and almost impossible area to search. The air force jets that had been scrambled to follow the 727 didn’t see her jump.

“She told me she opened the main chute and began to dump the money, but the money got caught in the canopy, deflating it. She cut that chute free and deployed the reserve. And this was her one mistake: she hadn’t noticed that the reserve was a training chute, not meant for actual use. Normally, such chutes are loosely stitched closed. This was something she’d never thought to check on. And now, she was rapidly approaching the ground without a deployed parachute.

“She had the presence of mind to slash the stitching away and free the training chute. Luckily, she carried a knife and the chute had a functioning ripcord. The chute opened successfully, but she was still moving at a high speed when she hit the water.”

“Water?” Coldmoon asked.

“Yes. She landed just upriver of Walupt Creek falls. The current carried her over the falls and into Walupt Lake — near Berry Patch. Roused by the cold water, she managed to swim to shore, despite the fractured leg. She passed out on the pebble beach. And that’s where she was discovered in the morning by a young farmer. The briefcase she had stolen was still strapped to her body with parachute line.”

“And that young farmer was Zephraim Quincy,” Coldmoon said.

Constance nodded. “That morning, he hadn’t yet heard about the skyjacking. He was living alone in the house. His father was in an assisted-care facility with a serious head injury, from which he would eventually die. Quincy was struggling to keep the farm going. Alicia didn’t tell him anything at first, except she categorically refused to be taken to the hospital. He carried her back to his clinic and was able to reduce her fracture, splint and plaster her leg. The paper that morning didn’t carry the news of the hijacking — it had happened too late the prior evening. So he cared for her that day, evening, and night. That, by the way, is why he never showed up at the traditional Berry Patch Thanksgiving dinner. The next morning, when the paper landed on his porch, he saw the headline and the sketch of D. B. Cooper above the fold. He realized that the woman he rescued, oddly wearing male clothing, must be Cooper.

“Five minutes later, when he walked into his clinic, he was carrying the newspaper. As he began to dress her wounds, he mentioned that he had alerted the sheriff and asked if there was anything she wanted to tell him before he arrived. She then told him everything — or almost everything. She especially emphasized that she hadn’t hurt anyone and that the bomb was a fake. She begged and pleaded with him not to turn her in, to call off the sheriff.

“By this time, I suspect the young farmer was already in love — a case of love at first sight. He was moved by her plea. He hadn’t really called the sheriff — that was just a test to see her reaction. So he kept her there in the farmhouse, caring for her and nursing her back to health. She, in turn, fell in love with him. For a few months they were happy, in their farm tucked away in the wilderness, like Tristan and Isolde in the forest of Morrois. No one knew she was there. But, of course, it was too good to be true, and for obvious reasons it couldn’t last. The searches were getting closer and FBI agents visited Quincy’s farm several times. D. B. Cooper was now on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list and over two hundred agents were working the case. She couldn’t hide forever.

“By spring, Alicia was well enough to travel. She knew that if she didn’t leave Quincy then, she never would. So she wrote him a note of thanks, planning to place it on the kitchen table early one morning and avoid a difficult scene. To her surprise, however, Quincy already suspected her plans: he’d awoken before sunrise and prepared her not only breakfast but a backpack full of supplies — enough to get her out of the state and beyond any danger of being apprehended. He gave her what little cash he had. He also tucked into that backpack their favorite book, inscribed to her. She had already researched a way to get a new identity and she knew exactly what to do. After leaving the farm, she headed for a large cemetery not far away — in Puyallup — and found a grave of a girl with her approximate birthdate. She assumed that identity.”

“It’s clear that Quincy loved her daring and courage,” said Pendergast. “He even admired the fact she was a rebel, an outlaw, as evidenced by the inscription: ‘that great social nomad, who prowls on the confines of a docile, frightened order.’”

“How did you get her to tell you all this?” Coldmoon asked.

“It was Aloysius’s second question that really broke her down, got her talking. Did you hijack the plane in order to steal the suitcase with the device? She responded in the affirmative.”

She let this sink in a moment before continuing. “Now under the new name of Felicity Frost, she traveled to the Midwest. The year was 1972. At some point after leaving the farm, she managed to get the scientist’s machine working. Her plan — in the short term, at least — was to make enough money to achieve independence. The future could wait. Using the device, she learned how to focus it a minute into the future and began making modest spot trades on a variety of Big Board stocks. As she grew more proficient, she began trading in options and was able to make larger profits. And though she never grew greedy, within a year she’d earned enough to pay off the mortgage on Quincy’s farm, and to send funds to the University of Washington Medical School paying the rest of his tuition — anonymously, of course.”

Coldmoon didn’t need to ask whether the two had ever corresponded again — the hunger in Dr. Quincy’s eyes for any crumb of information about the woman made it clear they never had.