Part 43, page 171

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

"You must have the wrong apart- ment," I said, from the doorway. Her reply made no sense. "I had a nervous breakdown after the skyjack," she said in a dull voice. Excusing myself, I ducked into the bathroom. I wanted to wash my face, collect my wits. Dozens of D. B. Cooper freaks had sought me out over the years, but this was going too far. I fully expected this one to tell me that D. B. was really a woman. When I came out of the bathroom my visitor was gone. I ran down the hall and out into the streets. Nothing. She had pulled a classic D. B. and van- ished into the ozone. I returned to my apartment, shak- ing my head. Still puzzled, I leafed through my Cooper scrapbook. There it was—an old advance copy of the maga- zine article the LA Times editors had killed in 1972. One of the photographs showed the crew of the skyjacked 727 after the plane — sparks rising high from the still down ventral stairs — had landed at Reno. Tina Mucklow, the stewardess Cooper held hostage on the plane, was sitting on her suitcase. Her long blonde hair was scraggly. Her posture was slumped — and somehow defeated. I no longer worry about whether the woman who appeared at my apart- ment was real, imaginary — or a prankster. She simply was. D. B. Cooper left more than a stack of cigarette butts when he bailed out into that freezing rainstorm. He left behind a victim, one who doesn't laugh at skyjacking jokes.

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