by Mark Frost
Jacoby claimed that one of the main reasons he returned to his hometown was to continue his studies with Native American tribes in the region, along with the need to care for his older brother Robert, the veteran reporter for the Post, who by this time had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
But accepting a conventional job with a hospital, as can be seen in this evaluation of Nadine, was no guarantee that Jacoby’s methods would be any less unusual.
* Nadine, drapes
1 I’m getting tempted to visit the Bookhouse myself. No telling what else you’d find on those shelves.
The Archivist now picks up the story again—TP
2 Verified—TP
3 All verified as “local” hallucinogens. The ingestion of which, I might add, might well encourage a hasty “marriage” to an Amazonian princess—TP
4 Not with me. I tried to plow my way through his “magnum opus,” but it reads like an encyclopedia of meandering gibberish, though I’ll concede it would probably make a lot more sense if you were on drugs—TP
*6* Andrew packard revisited (again)
We now return to the second installment of the Andrew Packard saga, also found in the Bookhouse.1
Andrew Packard did not die in the explosion at his boathouse. Josie’s plot, with Hank as her henchman, failed. Andrew had either been tipped off or sensed Josie was about to do him in and left the boathouse that day undetected, before the explosion.
Extensive planning on his part preceded this: Since we know human remains were found at the scene, a body was clearly in the boat at the time of the blast. One has to surmise that role was played by a bum or drifter whom Andrew drugged or killed and stashed in the boat the night before. Someone who wouldn’t be missed; Andrew got all of it dead right.
So how exactly did he die the second time?2
Assume Andrew got away clean and went into hiding. Maybe he didn’t know exactly who’d planted the bomb—although hard to imagine he had a better suspect in mind than Josie—but from then on he stayed a step ahead of her. Assume he found out about her plot beforehand, giving him plenty of time to set up his escape and hide enough cash to pull off a disappearing act. Once he realized he’d fleeced both Josie and the police, he created a new identity, and traveled back to Hong Kong to dig up the truth about Josie that he’d missed the first time.
He soon fingered his old “partner” Thomas Eckhardt as Josie’s accomplice, realizing he’d been played for a patsy by both of them, to kill him and take possession of his fortune. Andrew waited three years to put his revenge into play and didn’t reveal himself until all the players--including Hank, when he got out of the pen--were gathered on the stage.
The only person he trusted to help pull this off was the one he’d trusted the longest, his sister Catherine. Once Andrew knew the hit was coming all the rest was a setup--the “accident,” the new will--to catch Josie. Once Andrew split the scene, Catherine became his eyes and ears. Josie was patient, playing a long game; she waited almost 2 years to make her move. Josie was smart as a snake, but once his mind got clear about who she really was, Andrew was smarter. And as soon as Josie tried to sell the mill and tens of thousands of adjoining Ghostwood Forest acreage to Ben Horne for a speculative real estate venture--behind Catherine’s and Josie’s “partner” Eckhardt’s back--Andrew showed up in town again.
Andrew informs Josie that, since he’s obviously not dead, the mill is no longer hers, so there’s no sale. They toy with Josie for a while--brother and sister--punishing and humiliating her, treating her as a servant. They were like that, the two of them, the way they looked at people, like kids burning ants with a magnifying glass.
Then Andrew sends word to Eckhardt about where he can find Josie, letting him know how Josie has played him as well. Eckhardt first sends an emissary to take her out, but Josie shoots that man in Seattle. After that she tries to kill an FBI agent who is on to her--yours truly--with the same weapon.3
Then the noose begins to tighten. Andrew plays both ends against the middle. He tells Josie he knows she only tried to kill him because Eckhardt forced her to. He warns her the law is about to catch up with her, for that and all her other crimes. That much, at least, was true.4
5
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
Days after his death, an associate of Eckhardt showed up in Twin Peaks and made arrangements to transport both Eckhardt’s and Josie’s bodies back for burial in Hong Kong. Neither Andrew Packard nor anyone else objected to the arrangement.
The associate also left a gift with Catherine, one that Eckhardt apparently wanted her and Andrew to have: an elaborate Chinese puzzle box. Inside that box they found another identical but smaller box, and inside that one an even smaller steel box. When Andrew, Catherine and Pete succeeded in opening that one, they found a key to a safe deposit box at the Twin Peaks Savings and Loan. Eckhardt had visited the bank and left something there for them.
Pete and Andrew went to the bank the following morning together to check it out.
1 Agent Cooper’s investigation into the “cold” Packard case continues—TP
2 Yep. Body Heat. But I guess it was Andrew who saw the picture, not Josie. Or maybe they both saw it separately and that’s what tipped him off?—TP
3 Verified. During the Palmer investigation, a previously unidentified assailant shot Cooper in his room at the Great Northern Hotel. His notes reveal that Cooper, expecting the assault, was wearing a Kevlar vest that saved his life—TP
4 This is the end of the typewritten material. What follows is handwritten on the same page—TP
5 I’ve determined there’s a 96 percent probability this is the handwriting of Sheriff Truman. Given how shaky it appears, my guess would be that he was drinking heavily at the time, which accounts for the 4 percent disparity.
Truman must have written it after finding these chapters in the Bookhouse, just as Cooper had apparently intended him to do. Probably after Cooper left town, by the way.
The following excerpt from the coroner’s report could have been added by either Truman or the Archivist—TP
*7* RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
TWIN PEAKS POST1 march 28, 1989
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
That bomb at the bank provided a punctuation mark to the end of the final sentence of the final chapter of the Packards’ prominence in Twin Peaks. Thomas Eckhardt played the last card in their game after all. Authorities never did publicly identify the “third victim” who died at the bank, so Andrew Packard rose from his grave only to be sent hurtling back there by a second explosion. Given that Cooper had figured this all out, and passed the information on to Truman, it must have been decided somewhere in the corridors of power that some truths were simply too inconvenient to reveal.
This time Andrew stayed dead. The explosion was explained away as the tragic outcome of a gas leak from an antiquated boiler meeting an opportunistic spark. The Packard Mill and all its properties passed back into the sole possession of Catherine Martell, the grieving sister, and her grief was genuine, make no mistake about that. Survivors bear the brunt of tragedy, especially if they had a hand in creating it.
She was the only resident of Blue Pine Lodge now, and with no living heirs or relations, Catherine became a recluse. She never spoke or wrote about what had happened, so one question remains unanswered: Who exactly was she grieving for? All of them, perhaps; brother Andrew, certainly; husband Pete, for all his shortcomings--at least in her eyes--probably; maybe even Josie, the worthy opponent who had tested her like no other.2
Given her amorality and cold contempt toward people, it’s difficult to view Catherine Packard as a sympathetic figure. She was, however, tragic in the tradition of Greek drama, as one highborn with many gifts who falls victim to her own hubris.
* The Packard Mill, circa 1989
The role of genuinely tragic victim here is reserved for 18-year-old Audrey Horne. The following note was left for Ben Horne at the front desk of the Great Northern Hotel on the morning of th
e explosion at the bank.3
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
Audrey’s plan that morning, apparently, was to handcuff herself to the bars of the bank vault--where her father kept a lot of his money--after sending notes to local news organizations that they could find her there.4
In the weeks leading up to the accident, Audrey had been reading about social protest and civil disobedience. She brought with her to the bank copies of information she’d discovered about her father’s plans that she intended to share with the news sources. Her luck was as bad that day as her intentions were good. Those copies were destroyed in the explosion before anyone could see them.
But her father did receive her note at the hotel--too late to prevent her from being hurt, as it turned out--but in time to make him the only person in town who knew what his daughter was doing there that day. Ben Horne never revealed the existence of that note or commented on it to anyone. Those who saw him at his daughter’s bedside in the hospital afterward describe a man broken in half with grief, and, we can now also surmise, personal guilt.
Ben Horne experienced no overnight conversion, however. As noted, he went ahead with the purchase of the mill and Ghostwood from Catherine. But something did change in the man at that point.
In the months leading up to the explosion, Ben watched the calamity that befell the family of his friend and lawyer Leland Palmer with shock and horror; the murder of their daughter Laura unhinged the entire community. In its aftermath Ben went through something of a mental break himself.
5
* Ben Horne at the Great Northern
But the larger question remained: Would the injury to Ben’s daughter serve as a further wake-up call to make him more the man his daughter longed for him to be? She’d nearly died delivering that message to him, and her life hung in the balance. Only time would tell if he listened.6
1 Kind of quaint, isn’t it, how news was still being disseminated in print during these last days before the Internet. If it weren’t for all the murders and explosions and dizzying double-crosses, I’d be tempted to say it seemed like a more innocent time—TP
2 As the last of the old-growth forests were harvested, the lumber industry around Twin Peaks had been declining for years. Soon after, Catherine abruptly closed the Packard Mill—the town’s largest employer throughout the 20th century—after a fire, strangely, gutted its central facilities. As the town’s largest employer, the mill’s closing dealt a devastating blow to the local economy.
A few weeks after the fire, Catherine sold the mill and its associated properties to her former paramour, Benjamin Horne, and his investors in the Ghostwood Development, the plan he’d been pursuing for years.
3 Based on what it cost him personally, the price Horne paid for the mill was a lot higher than the amount on the check—TP
4 This “anonymous tip” must have been the source of the rumor mentioned in the Post article that something “big” was about to happen at the bank—TP
5 Verified. According to Jacoby’s subsequent patient files, Ben Horne did “surrender at Appomattox” and find his way back to health —TP
6 Chronologically speaking, this is one of the latest events that the Archivist references in the dossier. One possible theory is that something may have happened to our “correspondent” soon after this point. Making efforts to discover what that might have been—TP
*8* RENAULT AND JENNINGS
Two final loose ends tie up this section.
Jean Renault, the Canadian criminal kingpin, was gunned down in an FBI shootout--on American soil, outside of Twin Peaks--during an FBI-DEA joint sting operation involving narcotics that also involved local thug Hank Jennings. Agent Cooper himself took Renault out while under fire himself.1
Hank Jennings was then pulled in for parole violations that, in addition to international drug trafficking, also included assault and attempted murder. He pleaded guilty again and went off to serve a 25-year stretch in the state pen at Walla Walla.2
* Hank Jennings’s last day at the RR
3
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
Much can be learned in un- expected places. The library at the Bookhouse is unique in my experience as an invaluable local resource. This special shelf contains the members’ favorite tomes.
1. Hawk 2. Andy 3. James
4. Lucy (included because she buys all the books)
5. Harry Truman
6. Ed: “Read it five times; next time through I think I’m really going to figure it out”
7. Frank Truman 8. Cooper
9. Cappy 10. Toad 11. Hank
Good literature is a mirror through which we see ourselves more clearly, and it’s clear to see that the people of Twin Peaks have experienced many a twisting turn of fate. It’s time to go back and pick up the trail of Douglas Milford, to learn how he moved forward from the moment we last left him--1949--into the world, and town, of today.
1 Verified. A joint FBI-DEA operation—TP
2 Three years later—by which time the Archivist had stopped writing—I can confirm that Hank Jennings was fatally knifed in the prison weight room by a hard-core lifer who turned out to be a distant cousin of the Renault family. As we say in law enforcement and Sunday school, what goes around, comes around.
3 After signing this note, according to prison sources, the last of the Jennings clan of Twin Peaks drew his final breath—TP
*** THE COMING OF … WHAT?:
We know that after Milford presented his report on the Twin Peaks incident to Project Sign, the “Estimate of the Situation” that they sent to the Air Force top brass was roundly rejected. Soon afterward Sign turned into Project Grudge, and debunking UFOs became the order of the day.
The first case assigned to Major Milford for Grudge was mind altering. It came to him from an oblique angle, and his work on it took place over a three-year period, at the end of which the polar axis of UFO investigation would shift yet again, radically changing the focus of his work.
The case began when this letter1 arrived at Wright-Patterson AFB in November 1949.
* L. Ron Hubbard, circa 1948
2 3
4
5
* Crowley, date unknown
6
* Jack Parsons at JPL, circa 1942
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE
The report offers no explanation about why Hubbard waited so long to report this to authorities. It may have something to do with the fact that, in the interim, Ron Hubbard conned Jack Parsons out of his life’s savings and ran off to Florida with Parsons’s hot young girlfriend, where they used the money they snookered from him to buy a yacht.7
During those postwar years, JPL grew into a multimillion-dollar business, occupying a central role in the aerospace industry and the emerging military-industrial complex. As his company took off, Parsons doubled down on his involvement in occult mumbo-jumbo and came under suspicion for, possibly, selling secrets of America’s rocket program to a foreign government.
Soon after these charges came to light--although he was ultimately acquitted--JPL terminated its official relationship with Parsons. With his income gone and his professional reputation damaged, he was forced to sell the Parsonage. Struggling financially, he sued Hubbard to try to get his money back, while working as a consultant on a military missile program, when it came time to renew his national security clearance.
Which is why, soon after the foregoing report from Congressman Nixon landed on Major Doug Milford’s desk, Project Grudge dispatched him to Pasadena to investigate. This is the report he soon filed in response:
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA December 3, 1949
TOP SECRET
FIELD REPORT: MAJOR DOUGLAS MILFORD
SUBJECT: JACK PARSONS
I found Jack Parsons living in an apartment near the beach, in meager circumstances, trying to scrape together a living from a variety of consulting and manufacturing jobs. I approached him using cover as a journalist for a left-wing magazine, and he agreed to meet me for an
article I told him I was writing about “what really happened to him at JPL.” He welcomed the opportunity to, as he put it, “set the record straight.” He appeared fleshy and downtrodden, and his handsome features had started to corrode. His personal life had taken a recent turn and that was where, in a Manhattan Beach coffee shop, our conversation began:
DM: I heard you just got remarried, Jack. Congratulations.
JP: (chuckles briefly) I wish it were that simple, but thank you.
DM: If you don’t mind my asking, what’s happened to your ex?
JP: Helen?
DM: I thought her name was Sara.
JP: Oh, you mean Betty--Sara’s middle name is Elizabeth, that’s what she goes by, Betty. No, I was never married to Betty. She’s Helen’s younger sister--half sister. Helen was my first wife, but she’s married to someone else now, too.