The Moon Stands Still Read online

  Her chin was rising. I closed my eyes, wiped my face, and braced myself for the words of Tennessee Williams.

  “It’s almost impossible for us to believe that someone we love doesn’t love us.”

  I sighed and opened my eyes. “Who said that?”

  “Reverend Shannon. Act 2 of The Night of the Iguana. In that very moment when the good reverend delivered that line, I cursed Tennessee Williams himself.”

  “What for?”

  “That single sentence precipitated my first divorce. But, heavens, put that out of your mind.” She set the drink on the antique side table. “There’s something I’ve wanted to do for years, and now it seems we can.”

  “Kill Jack?”

  “Later. I’ve always wanted to attend the D.B. Cooper festival.”

  “There’s a festival?”

  “Every year, right here in Washington. I hear it’s a worthy celebration of a successful outlaw.”

  “Criminal.”

  “Raleigh, the man didn’t hurt anyone.”

  “He hijacked an airplane full of innocent passengers. His briefcase contained what looked like a bomb.”

  “And he let everyone go. If you ask me, he showed tremendous generosity. Any lesser thief would’ve robbed those people of their possessions. Instead, he gave them a priceless gift.”

  “Which was…?”

  She waved her hand with a flourish. “A story to tell for the rest of their lives.”

  “That’s what matters—the story?”

  “Of course! What are we without our stories?” She picked up the martini, giving it a swirl. “We can go to the festival and you can case the joint.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Whatever it is you law-abiding types do.” She swung the toothpick of olives. “Conduct research. Search for clues. Play the heavy.”

  “Among people worshipping a criminal?”

  “Mendacity.” Her chin was rising again. “It’s the system we live in.”

  I knew that line. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”

  “Excellent.” Eleanor peered keenly through the rhinestone glasses. “But who said it?”

  “Brick.” My life. It was officially pathetic. “Act two.”

  The never-retired actress sat back, pleased. “My work is starting to pay off.”

  But I’d learned enough for one night and headed for the kitchen. Already the lunch grease had worn off. But as I was about to cross the threshold, I stopped and looked back at Eleanor. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  She bit the last olive. “Only if it utterly offends me in the worst way.”

  “When you were married to Harry, did he ever win an argument?”

  “Of course not.” She batted her mascara eyes. “Should I assume this means you’ll take me to the Cooper festival?”

  I left the room.

  My phone buzzed as I was pulling dinner from the fridge. I took it from my pocket, expecting Peter. But it was a text message. From Jack.

  Get to the Bureau tomorrow morning. 8:30 sharp.

  I texted back: This is why I turn off my cell phone.

  And then I did just that.

  9

  Hair still wet from the shower, I drove into Seattle without Madame, parked at the Smith Tower, and trudged up the hill to the FBI. As I was signing the visitor’s sheet, one of the uniformed guards behind the bulletproof glass slid a plastic visitor’s badge toward me.

  “Raleigh Harmon, right?”

  The badge displayed my old FBI agent photo but with today’s date. There was also an expiration date—nine days away. Thanksgiving Day, in fact. I thanked the guard and clipped the badge to my brown suede blazer. In the elevator, two white-collar agents discussed the Seahawks’ chances of making the Super Bowl. I glanced down at the badge. In the photo, that brown-haired, brown-eyed woman wore a stoic smile. When the elevator doors opened, Jack stood waiting. My heart performed an Olympic-worthy somersault. I stepped around the agents.

  Jack wore another suit, still not nearly as nice as the El Gaucho suit, but navy blue like the world’s deepest freshwater lake. And a topaz tie that matched his blue eyes. Blue to make me feel blue.

  “Morning,” he said, as the elevator closed behind me. “Going for a hike?”

  I pinched my lapel. “Blazer.”

  “And jeans.”

  “These are my good jeans.”

  “And boots.”

  “For a platonic relationship, you sure pay a lot of attention to my wardrobe.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “One of us needs to.”

  My face burned. For ten years, I wore the unofficial uniform of government law enforcement. An ironed blouse under stiff blazer, drab dress slacks, low heels. Now I could wear whatever I wanted and do the professional work. I narrowed my eyes. “You brought me here for inspection?”

  “Grouchy. Didn’t get your Coke for breakfast?” He walked across the half-empty bullpen.

  I followed, flashback after flashback washing through my memory. The particular quick chirp of the desk phones. The acrylic smell of Xerox toner. And all the many times I’d walked this same path through these cubicles, despising this gorgeous guy walking in front of me. My face burned hotter. I wanted to stick my head out the window and let November slap me.

  Jack stopped at the conference room door, swinging one hand into the room, flicking on the lights. “I reserved it for two hours. Is that enough time?”

  “Depends.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I’m telling you, you have two hours. And McLeod wants me to reiterate the rules.”

  “What … rules?”

  “See, already we have a problem.” Jack shook his head. “Remember that paperwork you signed yesterday? It listed rules.”

  I despised him. “For your information, I—”

  “Number one, don’t take anything.”

  “McLeod never said that.” But maybe Agent Pierce Grant did.

  “As that document stated,” Jack said, stretching out each word, the slow pace countering my defensive jabs. “Don’t even take pictures of this evidence.”

  “I’m supposed to rely on my memory—are you kidding me?”

  Jack took hold of my elbow and moved me into the room, closing the door behind us. The breeze created by the swing of the door wafted his citrus-musk cologne over me. I held my breath.

  “Harmon, I’m going to chalk this up to you being from Virginia because you don’t seem to understand what’s going on here. The Seattle field office, more than any other field office in the entire country, considers D.B. Cooper one gigantic black eye. We’ve been chasing this guy for decades and have almost nothing to show for it. I have done heavy negotiations for you to even look at this evidence. Consider these articles equivalent to what was found in Tutankhamun’s tomb. You better guard them with your life, because that’s exactly what the Bureau will take if anything happens to these records.”

  I set down my backpack and smiled, sweet as Southern tea. “I’d expect nothing less from them. Now if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Second item. Contact the geologist.”

  I glared at him. Dear God. I hated the most attractive man on the planet. “You mean, the retired geologist. The man who is battling terminal cancer?”

  “Look, he was our go-to way back when the first bundles of money turned up. Get down there and see if he can help us going forward.”

  I took off my blazer and draped it over one of the leather chairs encircling the oval conference table. In front of the chair, a cardboard box waited on the table beside several three-ring binders. I skimmed the numbers on the box’s side, reading the evidence identification.

  “Where does this geologist live?”

  “Outside Vancouver.”

  “Canada?”

  “No. The other Vancouver.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Across the river from Portland.”

  “Terrific. I think Canada is closer.”

  “Harmon, if you le
ave early enough, you can get there and be back in time for…”

  He didn’t need to finish that sentence. We both knew what it meant—in time for Madame’s visiting hour at the asylum.

  I yanked out the chair and sat down, restraining a sigh. More road trips. Just what I didn’t need. The state’s cold case required at least one trip to the coast, three hours each direction. Now I could add southern Washington to the commute. And, judging by the date on my ID badge, everything needed to get done ASAP. I tried to imagine that urgent schedule combined with making sure Madame got to the asylum every afternoon. Perspiration prickled across my shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” Jack asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He leaned down, one hand pressed against his azure tie. Before I could stop breathing, I caught another swoon-worthy scent of cologne. I yelled at my heart to die-die-die but his voice was low…forceful. “If you need any help, Harmon. I’m one phone call away.”

  I reached for the box. Jack straightened. I looked inside. “Where’s the rest of it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am definitely not kidding,” he said, walking out of the room.

  In the wake of Jack’s exit, I fanned my face with my notebook before cataloging the contents of the box. It didn’t take long. The entire collection of physical evidence in the D.B. Cooper hijacking included the following:

  Two parachutes, left behind on the airplane

  One black necktie, ditto

  One pearl tie pin, ditto

  Dan Cooper’s Northwest Orient Airlines airline ticket purchased in Portland, ditto

  Fourteen bills from the bundle found in 1981 by a boy digging on the banks of the Columbia River

  But the twenty-dollar bills that I dug up weren’t in the box. I sat for several moments, tapping my pen on the table. Was the money not there because of Jack… or Agent Grant? Or even McLeod? Did someone send the money to the FBI lab in D.C.? With one week before Thanksgiving, the soonest that material would get examined was January.

  But none of that was my problem, I decided, opening one of the binders.

  Neither of the two parachutes taken by Cooper was ever recovered. Not even a shred of the material. When the plane left Seattle with the $200,000 in twenty-dollar bills, delivered by agents in the Seattle FBI office, Cooper was wearing the black tie and tie tack. Speculation swirled around why the hijacker left the tie and pin behind. A calling card, perhaps. Or a taunt. Or just a mistake.

  I read over the witness statements. The passengers all described him as “polite.” Even courteous. As Eleanor said, he didn’t hurt anyone. The pilot who flew the plane out of Seattle felt that “bump of air” somewhere over southern Washington. When the plane landed in Reno to refuel, the rear stairs were open. Aviation experts theorized that Cooper lowered the stairs and jumped in the vicinity of southern Washington or northern Oregon. But he disappeared into thin air.

  I placed my phone on the table to keep track of my time. More than thirty minutes had already elapsed. I snapped on exam gloves from my pack and picked up each physical object, writing down descriptions in my notebook, along with the figure $5,800. That was what the boy found on the banks of the Columbia River. Roughly half of the money went to the insurance company covering the ransom, and half to the boy. The fourteen bills given to the FBI were carefully preserved in an acid-free evidence bag.

  Before placing the $200,000 in the briefcase, agents recorded the serial numbers and had the bank bundle the money in multiples of $2,000 so Cooper could count it quickly.

  I went back to that figure from the first discovery, $5,800. Not a multiple of $2,000. Either $200 was missing, or the money was re-bundled. From the photographs in the binder, it looked like the bank-issued paper markers were missing. I wrote in my notebook, “Repackaged bills? Who? Cooper? An accomplice? Or did ten $20 bills deteriorate while buried in the soil? Evidence?”

  I picked up the evidence bag with the original bills. Eroded around the edges, with the thickened texture of money that goes through the washing machine and dryer. The other kind of money laundering.

  I glanced at my phone. An hour had passed.

  I continued through the binders, searching specifically for any reports from the geologist. I found several. His name was Tim Bureley, a professor who specialized in sedimentary geology at Portland College. Bureley proposed two theories for the bills’ appearance along the Columbia. The money could’ve been buried there long before it was discovered in 1981 because that same year, the state of Oregon dredged that portion of the river to reinforce some eroding sand banks. Bureley drafted a graph that showed the engineering work removing nearly a decade of accumulated sand and soil, which would place the bills close to the surface. Close enough that the boy found them by simply digging a fire pit.

  Bureley’s second theory was that the bills originally landed further upriver. Natural forces picked up the bundles and eventually deposited them down river. Continuing with that theory, the geologist highlighted the hijacked plane’s flight pattern, and the location where Cooper was purported to have jumped. He then linked up the upriver streams and waterways feeding the Columbia. If that was the case, the geologist hypothesized, the most likely location for the dropped money was at the Washougal River. It flowed directly into the Columbia and sat under the plane’s flight path. Also, water turbulence could easily produce the weathered condition of the outer bills. He also noted the soil deposition rates for downriver burial.

  I leaned back in my chair. Not bad.

  Not bad at all.

  Feeling a begrudging respect for Tim Bureley, I wrote down his name and contact information, hoping none of it had changed since 1981—a hope built on the desire to avoid asking Jack.

  Behind the geologist’s report, I found the mineralogy analysis conducted by a D.C. Bureau geologist. Same job I had for five years before becoming an agent. The job I loved until my dad was murdered and suddenly trying to solve crime from a laboratory didn’t feel right anymore. I drew a breath, held it tight, and read over the trace evidence. Silica in abundance. No surprise, sand was primarily silica. Other trace minerals included iron, magnesium, some organic matter from the river, all the usual suspects one would expect from that section of the Columbia River. And a special note on some chemical anomalies, later identified as Mount St. Helens ash. That volcano was just fifty miles north of the Columbia, and it blew only three months before the money was found in 1980.

  I checked my phone for time. Thirty-eight minutes left.

  Quickly, I glanced through the third binder. There was an interview with the boy who found the $5,800 in 1980, along with interviews of his parents and other witnesses camping in a nearby RV park. His parents had sent the boy to the river to start the evening fire. The kid dug down about fifteen inches and—bingo—found the money.

  I got up, stretching my legs, and thought back to the hole I dug on the banks of the Willapa. It was roughly the same depth as that kid’s fire pit. I picked up the binder with the original photographs of the 1980 money. A similar rubber band wrapped around the eroding bills.

  Speeding through the rest of the information, I noted the names of the original agents—long gone from this office, some possibly dead—and saw that Agent Pierce Grant came on the case in late 1981. Given his impending retirement, I figured Grant joined the Bureau straight out of college. Which fit his temperament. Grant was one of those agents-for-life. And he would close this case to put the final notch on his belt.

  One more check on time. Eight minutes.

  I flipped through pages and pages of leads, interviews, tips, all of them dead ends. Reading through them, a jaded feeling settled over me. Agents had bird-dogged every single scrap of information, and the leads grew progressively weirder. In 1992, a surgeon called the Bureau to suggest that his transgender patient was D.B. Cooper. The patient was brought in and he-she confessed to the hijacking. But there was no corroborating evidence for h
is-her statement. When government lawyers informed him-her that the statute of limitations was still running, he-she recanted.

  I shook my head and looked at my phone.

  Time to go.

  I shrugged into my blazer, once more wondering about the bills I’d found. I didn’t believe in luck, but Grant would need it if he hoped to get that evidence through the D.C. lab. Right now, the most pressing agenda in Washington was the President pardoning a turkey.

  I slung my backpack over my shoulder and opened the conference room door. I stepped out, expecting to see Jack.

  He wasn’t there.

  But several agents looked up. And immediately looked away.

  10

  I reached Tacoma in record time and picked up Madame. Eleanor was just getting home from an enormous shopping spree for glittery objects nobody needed. She once more mentioned the D.B. Cooper festival, but I barely listened. Madame needed to get to her daily appointment with dementia.

  While the dog visited the asylum, I ran laps around Fort Steilacoom Park. Slow and steady, my footsteps almost as measured as a military march, I wound past the old barns and rusting farm equipment. Now the ground supported soccer fields and cupped puddles in baseball diamonds, the sodden sand a color of an oiled catcher’s mitt. I kept a measured pace, willing my mind to comb over the facts of Krystal Jewel’s murder and the disappearance of D.B. Cooper. I refused to think of Jack.

  When it came time to retrieve Madame, I crossed the park’s middle section. No larger than one of the nearby baseball diamonds, it was enclosed by a low stone wall. It was also Washington state’s saddest patch of land. Between the years 1876 and 1953, some 3,000 mental patients were buried here because nobody came to claim their body. Some of them lay in mass graves. Others received a small metal marker. But those markers had no names. Only numbers.

  As I reached the low stone wall, I started my prayer. But as I was rounding the wall’s second corner, I noticed an old red Subaru. It was parked next to the graveyard, its back hatch lifted despite the falling rain. Inside the graveyard, a woman was digging the ground with a shovel. I stopped. She had long gray hair, the strands wafting on the wind like smoke.