“I knew Bernie was ill. She can’t get medical care here in Canada. That’s a long story. She has always loved our home, but I think Bernie had some unfinished business with her family down there, too.”
“Under the terms of the trust,” explained Alex, “since Ms. Pruner is ceasing to be a Canadian resident, she is no longer a beneficiary. This triggers a change-in-beneficiaries clause.”
Frieda sniffed back tears. “She didn’t say goodbye.” Henry put his arm around her, and she leaned against him. Tess placed her hand on the young girl’s shoulder.
“She gave me some notes for you,” Alex said, almost as an afterthought. He handed envelopes to each of Henry, Tess, and Frieda.
Henry just held his, wanting to open it in private; Tess did the same.
“Yours,” Alex said to Frieda, “feels like it has something else inside.”
Frieda made a mess of tearing open her envelope and shook the contents into her hand. A folded note slid part-way out, and she caught the brass ring of her brooch. She couldn’t have appeared more surprised if Alex had just turned around and passed through the wall. “I thought this was gone.”
“Is that yours?” Tess asked.
“It sure is,” Frieda said, holding the brooch close to her face. She squinted at Henry through the odd metal circle and swirl.
The last few days flashed through Henry’s mind. From the anger and frustration of the crossword to Frieda’s arrival, to lying on the couch with Tess’s hair tickling his nose, to the danger and violence of Keller and the fire. Despite the chaos, Henry felt alive. He felt calm. He felt himself again. Words wouldn’t form in his mouth.
Frieda read the note, sharing pieces with the group. “She says that she told me her story, and now it’s mine to write about if I want.” Frieda looked at Tess, “Would you want to work with me on Bernadette’s story? It’s a good one.”
“If you think it would make a good graphic novel, then I would love to work with you, Fred. I can’t wait to hear you tell it.”
Henry watched Frieda read on, her lips moving slightly as she neared the end of the letter. He knew she was trembling, not mouthing the words. The note in Henry’s hand felt much larger than what they were learning now. Still, the accountant inside of him kicked in, continuing the line of questions.
“What’s in the trust?”
Alex grinned. “Well, the trust itself will be wound up, and its assets will be distributed to its ultimate beneficiaries. That’s you guys as residents of 1584 Richardson Street and a Linda Fullarton.” Alex paused.
Always with the dramatic effect.
“The Windfall Trust owns all the shares of 121702 BC Ltd., a private company that owns—”
“Our home,” Tess interrupted softly.
Alex looked at her as though he understood what those words meant to her. “Yes, the Richardson Street house.”
Tess threw her arms around Henry and made a squeezing noise. Then she turned and tried to do the same to Mr. Benham, who sat up inches to oblige. “We have our own home.”
Frieda got in on the excitement and gave Henry a hug. Henry lifted her up and swung her feet back and forth in the air.
Alex held up his hands. “There’s more.”
Henry put Frieda down. Tess straightened up.
“Over the years, the trust has only distributed capital funds to its beneficiaries as needed. Well, it turns out that income earned in the trust was reinvested in the company for additional real estate. In the seventies, it purchased a piece of commercial real estate downtown. East Hastings, though. Not the nicest neighborhood. And, in the early nineties, it purchased several condos in Yaletown on presale.”
“Presale?” Tess asked.
“They got in early,” Henry said. “Cheap.”
Alex continued. “These are currently rentals. So you guys will have to agree whether you want to be landlords, or whether you want the trust to sell the properties and just give you the cash.”
Numbers flew through Henry’s head.
An approximate value of a Yaletown condo, estimate the capital gain, less the taxes . . .
“That’s what? Three or four million dollars?”
“Closer to five,” Mr. Benham said.
Henry spun and looked at him. “You knew about this, too?”
Mr. Benham nodded. “Son, I helped set this up nearly fifty years ago. I didn’t think I’d see the day it would all come to fruition. Bernie understood what she was doing when we put this into play, and we all sure as heck knew just how much everything was worth.”
“The Windfall Trust. WFT,” Henry said, recalling the pawnshop ticket. “There was no fifty thousand, was there?” he asked Benham, his voice tinged with admiration. “The Silver and Gold loans money to the trust on the security of the insurance money. The trust loans the funds to the company to purchase Richardson Street. And the company borrows against Richardson to lend money back to the Silver and Gold. A bit of rent and income from the pawnshop, and eventually things get paid down.”
Just marks on paper. A grand, simple plan.
Benham smiled proudly. “We did okay.”
“Actually,” Alex said, “a woman named ‘Paulette Johnston’ apparently settled the Windfall Trust. Then she just vanished. She’s something of a mythical figure around my office. Could you tell me anything about her, Mr. Benham?”
“She was real,” Frieda said, looking down at the refolded note from Bernadette.
Benham nodded his agreement. “That’s about as much as I can tell you.”
Alex patted Henry on the back. “I’m going to miss you when you move, you know that?”
“Are you kidding?” Henry said. He looked at Frieda and at Tess. “I can’t leave. My life’s here.”
They both slammed into him at once, pinning his arms with their own.
“Then, I will see you at Natali’s,” Alex said, tucking his leather folder under his arm. “But before I go, did you hear Stewart’s been cleared?”
“Great news,” Henry said from between Frieda and Tess. “Good for him.”
“That’s not all, Henry. Read the newspaper.”
Henry, Frieda, and Tess stood on the sidewalk, looking up at 1584 Richardson Street. An enormous blue tarp covered the top right corner of the building. What poked out from the edges looked blackened from smoke. In stark contrast, the left side of the home was pristine and welcoming.
Shima moaned his impatience from the carrier in Frieda’s arms.
“Where do we start?” Henry asked.
Tess pointed her thumb at the cat and said, “Let’s start with your suite, then work our way up.”
Henry led the way into the house. As he walked through the front glass door the first thing he saw—before he smelled the residue of smoke, before he saw the stains of water on the walls and the stairs—was a newspaper. Someone had delivered the Saturday Globe and Mail. He collected it, and, without looking up from the paper, walked through the still-unlocked door of his suite.
The headline read, Business Owners Defend Robin Hood Accountant. It was there in its entirety: Natali, Mr. Munroe, Dr. Well, and all the others. The newspaper had gotten a hold of his emails and the businesses. The article expounded on corporate greed and social responsibility.
Stewart?
“This is good, right?” Tess asked.
“It sure looks that way,” he said with a smile.
Henry strode straight to the couch and sat down. As though in a trance, he unfolded the sections: British Columbia, Business, Focus, Arts. He opened the Arts section and, there on page four, exactly where it should be, was the crossword. Henry settled back onto his Ikea hide-a-bed couch and felt his entire body relaxing as he sighed.
He closed his eyes and listened to Frieda, in the kitchen, coaxing Shima from the borrowed carrier. Tess took a seat next to him, closer than necessary given the size of the couch. She leaned her weight against him, settling her head on his shoulder. Tess’s hand found his, and their fingers interlace
d.
They sat like that for a long time, with only the sound of a young girl, cooing at an old cat, floating in the air. The firefighters had left all the windows open, but there was still a lingering smell of charcoal in the suite.
Something welled in Henry. A sense of belonging that had been missing perhaps for years.
Frieda walked into the living room, saying something about Kilimanjaro. She held Shima, purring, draped over one arm. She stopped in mid-sentence, stiffened, and pointed, her free arm as straight as an arrow.
“What’s that?” she asked, her tone flat and serious.
An old, blue canvas duffel bag leaned against the wall behind the front door.
Afterword
Unlike every other character in this novel, DB Cooper is a real person/event.
That is to say, on the evening of November 24, 1971, a man purchased a ticket on Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 from Portland to Seattle, under the name Dan Cooper. News reports and lore have also referred to him as DA Cooper and DB Cooper. The name itself has not been linked to an actual person, only to a European comic book series about a Canadian military flying ace.
Once the plane was off the ground, the man calling himself Cooper revealed to a flight attendant that he had what appeared to be a briefcase bomb. He allowed the thirty-six passengers to leave the plane in Seattle but demanded two hundred thousand dollars in “negotiable American currency” and four parachutes. The remaining flight crew was to take him to Mexico. In mid-flight, near the border between Washington and Oregon States, Cooper jumped from the plane with two parachutes, the money, and his briefcase.
One of the many things that attracted me to Cooper’s crime is how it seems to say so much about the point in time at which it took place. In 1971, America was withdrawing troops from Vietnam, but public sentiment was still divided. Canada’s Prime Minister in 1971, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, is credited by some with having said at the time that “Canada should be a refuge from militarism,” although I’ve been unable to find the exact context of this quote.
The many media reports from that era also include protests by Canadians against their own government, suggesting that this country, too, was divided. Nevertheless, in March 1969, Trudeau explained to the National Press Club in Washington DC that Canada’s immigration policy was “blind” on the question of draft dodging and desertion. A good number of US citizens crossed the border to settle in Canada, and many are still there today.
Also, in the United States in 1971, leaked documents revealed the government had not been forthright about the extent of loss of life overseas. The North American economy was slumping; the Boeing Company, based in Everett, Washington, laid off an incredible thirty-five thousand workers in 1970 and another fifteen thousand the following year.
There are reams of resources online, which will provide the curious reader with as much detail and evidence as they would like about Cooper’s incredible crime as well as theories involving the circumstances (e.g., Cooper was a disillusioned Vietnam veteran, or a disgruntled Boeing engineer). References to Vietnam, Boeing, riots, et cetera in this story are not intended as political statement; rather, they are included to provide a broad cultural context of the Pacific Northwest in 1971 and as a nod to these theories.
Amateur and professional sleuths alike have taken advantage of the fact that the FBI openly released many of their records in a plea for public assistance in finding Cooper. Some dedicated individuals have gone so far as to undertake microscopic analysis on particles found on a tie suspected to have belonged to Cooper. Despite all these efforts, the identity of the hijacker and the fate of the ransom money remain mysteries.
There has been an enormous amount of investigation and speculation in the Cooper case, and I don’t intend to revisit it all here. Indeed, because there are so many internet sites, articles, documentaries, and podcasts that re-iterate the same information, and it would be impossible to compile a complete citation of sources for those who wish to find out more. I include this addendum simply to provide some background on a few of the pieces of Cooper’s tale that I’ve chosen to weave into Bernadette and Keller’s narratives, and to offer you some good places from where to start your own research.
From there, every person will follow their own, unique path down the rabbit hole that is the disappearance of DB Cooper.
The money – serial numbers
The FBI purports to have recorded the serial numbers of all ten thousand twenty-dollar bills that made up the ransom payment. There are websites that still contain this list of serial numbers, including at least one search engine, to confirm whether a serial number that you type in is part of the ransom.
The money – found bills
In 1980, a young boy named Brian Ingram found five thousand eight hundred dollars buried in a sand bar on the Columbia River. These bills were confirmed to have been part of the Cooper cash. Speculations on how the cash got there include an intentional burial, drifting on the Columbia River, or dredging. This find plays a major role in most theories about where Cooper may have landed.
In our story, Bernadette discovers Cooper’s body at the mouth of the Washougal River. She notices that some of the money carried in the spare parachute had already spilled out before she arrived. As she points out, when she talks about disposing of Cooper’s body, the Washougal flows into the Columbia River, upstream from Ingram’s find in 1980.
The parachute – choice and survival
A skydiver named David Robinson offers some unique insight into the parachuting component of the story on a podcast called Generation Why (Episode 111). Robinson explains the differences between the chutes available to Cooper and the sort of person who may have chosen one over another. He provides what I feel is compelling logic that Cooper likely would have died on his descent. Cooper wore only a business suit, and he faced the wind shear of jumping from a jet airplane in a thunderstorm.
In our story, Bernadette erroneously believes that certain red parachute cords were deliberately cut as sabotage. This is again a reference to comments made in Robinson’s interview. The parachute that Cooper is believed to have chosen would have red cords which were to snap apart and provide for some limited steering ability.
At the very least, without gloves, it would have been virtually impossible for Cooper to control his chute by pulling on wet, icy cords with his near-frozen bare hands.
The parachute – Amboy
Bernadette leaves us in the end to reunite with her sister in Amboy, Washington. In 1971, as she heads north to the Canadian border, Bernadette stops in Amboy “just to wash up … and get rid of the parachute equipment and some of Jim’s things from the trunk.”
In 2008, a group of young boys found a buried parachute near Amboy, Washington. Although the FBI has said that this is not Cooper’s canopy, many theories contend that it still could be. Much of this turns on statements of the FBI’s expert, who said that the Amboy canopy was made of silk and not nylon like the Cooper canopy. However, online sleuths point out that photographs of the Amboy canopy do not show the amount of rotting that would be expected of buried silk material. Other local stories exist to explain the existence of the Amboy chute.
Flight crew - Brenda
At first blush, the victims of Cooper’s stunt appear limited to the insurance company, the inconvenienced passengers, and the reputation of the airline. The truth is more complicated.
Many people who were there that day have chosen to enjoy, even capitalize on, their association with Cooper. However, there are also those who have tried to distance themselves from this experience.
For this reason, I have deliberately not portrayed any specific member of the crew of Flight 305. While interwoven with facts, “Brenda” is not intended to represent any real person or the actions of any single individual.
Also, readers may note that I have retained the disused term “stewardess” for scenes taking place in 1971, while present day references are to “flight attendants.” This is me
rely an artistic decision.
Cooper – the continued hunt
In 2016, the FBI declared that they were ceasing all investigations into the Cooper hijacking. Forty-five years had passed, so who could blame them?
The general public, though, appears unwilling to let the story end there. As I mentioned, there is a vast amount of discussion and research online, with a wide number of podcasts discussing Cooper’s crime and the available evidence, and the internet community known broadly as web sleuths continue to carry the torch. There are just as many groups online engaged in serious, disciplined research as there are those enjoying speculative theories (e.g., Cooper was a government distraction from the Vietnam War).
Of particular note, a small group named The Cooper Research Team or Citizen Sleuths have approached the evidence from a scientific and objective perspective. With the cooperation of an FBI agent formerly assigned to the case, Special Agent Larry Carr, they have compiled one of the most comprehensive resources on the Cooper evidence.
Some resources
FBI Files online
https://vault.fbi.gov/D-B-Cooper%20/
Cooper Research Team/Citizen Sleuths
https://citizensleuths.com/
Archive of Cooper-related documents
https://website.thedbcooperforum.com/
Historical newspapers: Statesman Journal (Salem, Oregon) and The Capital Journal (Salem, Oregon)
www.newspapers.com
Dropzone (discussion forum for parachutists)
http://www.dropzone.com/
Forums:Skydiving:Skydiving History & Trivia:DB Cooper
Boeing layoffs 1969-1971
Stein, Alan J. “Boeing Bust (1969-1971).” HistoryLink.org Essay 20923, posted December 16, 2019.
www.historylink.org/File/20923
Boeing 727 details (comprehensive article, with incredible centerfold of technical drawings)
Windfall Page 28