Welcome back to Buckhorn where my patience has finally been rewarded and we are getting back to the Bill Hastings and Ruth Davenport storyline. Part 8 left us all a little mesmerized and stunned and it veered off the main thread quite a bit, but I did have a feeling, and right I was, that all the other threads would start to tie together a little tighter afterwards. Due to that fact, I am also going to concentrate on our good friends Gordon Cole, Albert Rosenfield and Tammy Preston as they travel, along with Diane Evans, to investigate what is happening with Agent Cooper.
Tammy brings a cuppa Joe for Gordon on board the FBI plane they are travelling, destination Philadelphia, returning from Yankton prison where Diane recently met Coop and told Gordon that it was not the Cooper she knew and led us all to assume that something terrible had happened between them shortly before his disappearance 25 years earlier, we have all perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly alluded to the fact that Dopplecooper sexually assaulted Diane.
Diane and Albert are sleeping, though not for much longer as Cole is asked to speak to Colonel Davis on the phone regarding a discovery of a body in Buckhorn, and I doubt many could sleep through the sound of Gordon’s bellowing like a foghorn.
Gordon’s responses to mishearing will never fail to amuse me. I myself have had partial hearing loss since a child and I rely heavily on lip-reading so these segments always amuse me as I have often misheard so much in my time, perhaps without the comedy retorts though. “I don’t appreciate your language one bit Colonel”, Gordon exclaims much to Tammy’s concern, “Oh a place, Buckhorn! Buckhorn, South Dakota, well by golly we’re over East South Dakota right now!”
As Gordon relays the message to Tammy of Lieutenant Knox being the person they need to meet in Buckhorn, Diane starts to wake. Is there perhaps a faint flicker of recollection on her face when she hears that name or is it that she’s making a mental note to remember?
Gordon taps Diane’s shoulder to give her the unwanted news that they are going to have to make a detour to Buckhorn, her response is already the classic Diane we have come to know and love, “Fuck you Gordon, I want to go home”. He tells her that this is important and it may be of interest to her, a case involving a man who Agent Cooper once knew, “The Blue Rose case?” she asks, he tells her, yes and she jingles some empty miniature spirit bottles at him, “Coming up, I just got to talk to the Pilot first”. Now during this whole conversation, Gordon squeezes the shoulders of Diane. It’s probably nothing but I couldn’t help but notice, and I just have a feeling, probably a wrong one, that he was telling her something with each squeeze. I am not sure why I have this feeling, but I do feel that Gordon is not all that he seems. This probably sounds ridiculous and perhaps blasphemous but I have noticed the word ‘squeeze’ being used on two occasions where it hasn’t quite seemed right or at least has made me wonder. The first was the Evolution of The Arm telling Dougiecoop to squeeze Ike the Spikes hand off. The second I will come to shortly.
Albert has awoken now too, he looks at Diane and says, “I know, fuck you Albert”, then turns away to go back to sleep. Diane looks at her mobile phone. It is BLOCKED presumably because they are mid-flight, and that it’s an FBI plane they’re riding. Who is Diane hoping to make contact with? Is she expecting a message from someone?
The on-board flight phone rings, Tammy answers it and gives it to Gordon advising him that it’s Warden Murphy from Yankton Prison. It becomes clear immediately that Gordon has received the news of Dopplecoopers ‘escape’. “Cooper flew the coop!” Some of you will remember Gordon saying a similar line once before, that time he was telling Cooper that his former partner, Windom Earle, had ‘flew the coop’. He had escaped a psychiatric hospital, it feels like another little bit of history repeating.
We’re going to take a brief little pit stop in Twin Peaks town now, where Bobby Briggs has taken Sheriff Truman and Hawk to visit his mother, Betty, to talk about the last meeting between her late husband Major Garland Briggs and Agent Cooper. Betty still lives in Twin Peaks so we can guess now that she is not the same Betty who is Secretary to Hastings that Dopplecooper has been looking for.
Betty had been expecting this exact moment and tells them that the day before Garland’s death, he took her to the side and said that, “one day our son Bobby and Hawk and Sheriff Truman, I didn’t know it would be this Sheriff Truman, he said that they would come and ask me about Special Agent Dale Cooper. He squeezed my shoulders when he told me this, he just said when they come to ask you about Agent Cooper you give them this, and now you’re here.” This is the second ‘squeeze’ I noticed – it made me think I should keep an eye out for shoulder squeezes.
I have a sense that Diane may be in contact with Phillip Jeffries, another FBI Agent she would have known well. It’s quite possible that he got to her before Albert did, she didn’t look surprised to see Albert that night at the bar after all. Diane and Doppelcooper’s meeting at the prison was emotional and there was no feeling at that time that they had been in contact recently. She looked startled and curious to how much he had changed – if they were acting this, they did it brilliantly. What she told Gordon about him not being Dale Cooper was honest, she told him it was something she felt in her heart. Could she really have been luring Gordon in so that he keeps her around on the inside, where she is able to report back to Doppelcooper? I don’t like the thought of her being that conniving, so if she is doing this, then she’s doing it for good reason.
Mackley briefs the FBI Agents on what they know so far about the discovery of the body. He tells them that William Hastings was having an affair with the local librarian, Ruth Davenport. Davenport’s head was found atop the headless body of Major Briggs. Once they had Hastings in custody, his wife was found murdered at their home, apparently by their lawyer George Bauser who is also now in custody. The next day Hastings secretary was killed in a car explosion – at which point Albert stops Mackley to ask him, “What happens in Season 2?” This line is so brilliant, and for a moment, just a moment, I had a glimmer of hope that this was a hint at another season *prays*. (I mean if you think back, we’re only halfway through this Series and a humongous amount of stuff has happened. It’s hard to believe it was ever planned to be a 9 Part series, they’d never have fit this all in).
The team now enter the morgue where Constance Talbot is waiting to show them the headless corpse of Major Briggs. Lieutenant Knox enters first and Constance gives her a knowing smile and salute, its serious business when the FBI come to town!
While they look over the body, Mackley explains that it turns out that William Hastings, along with the help of Ruth the librarian, was researching and publishing some ‘strange little blog’ about some alternate dimension. Albert looking over the case file comments, “This from the Principal of the local High School”, Constance responds, “Not to mention marble champion of the sixth grade“, Albert in his usual sarcastic tone replies, “When did he lose his marbles?” Constance replies, “When the dog got his cats eyes”. And then there is a moment, a precious look of respect and amusement from Albert at Constance, a moment of chemistry not quite sexual, but just as spine-tingling as the moment Coop first laid eyes on Audrey Horne — freshly squeezed. I may have let out an actual little squeal at the thought that Albert may have met his match in both with and romance, and Gordon’s wry smile of glee whilst this moment took place only emphasized its meaning more strongly.
Albert gets back to work, telling the others that about a week ago Hastings ended his blog entry with this cryptic sentence, “Today we finally entered what we call The Zone and we met the Major”.
Albert and Gordon step out of the room briefly to discuss not so quietly what is going as they have noted that this is the body of a man in his 40’s, not 72 as Briggs would be if he had just died. They discuss that they thought he had died at the government facility just outside of Twin Peaks (Listening Post Alpha), 25 years ago. Gordon responds, “Well consider this, Cooper knew Briggs, Cooper was around Briggs 25 years ago and now Cooper shows up around this neck of the woods”, Albert agrees, “on the loose in this neck of the woods”. It’s clear then that Gordon and Albert both suspect that Cooper is involved with Briggs’ death.
Constance finishes telling them of her findings, of the gold wedding ring found in Briggs’ stomach with the inscription, ‘To Dougie, love Janey-E”. Gordon decides they need to speak to William Hastings.
Back in Twin Peaks, Bobby, with a cheeky grin tells Truman and Hawk that he knows how to open the lead dowel – his dad had brought one home one night. Outside Bobby takes the rod and slams it on the concrete, it bounces into the grass. He picks it up and holds it up to their ears so they can hear the strange electrical buzz it’s making. When the buzz stops Bobby throws it again onto the ground. He gives it back to Truman who is now able to open it up. Inside there are two rolled pieces of paper.
On the first, it says, ‘253 yards east of Jack Rabbits Palace. Before leaving Jack Rabbits Palace put some soil from that area in your pocket’. There are also two dates, the 1st and 2nd of October which Truman reveals are 2 and 3 days away from today. There are also shapes drawn, two triangles in black the shape of the Twin Peaks, a red dot, a red crescent shape and the same black ‘bunny’ shape we saw earlier in the series on the Ace of Spades card, the place that Dopplecooper was looking for, the place he needed co-ordinates to. The time 2:53 (time and time again) is also marked.
Bobby has a look of amazement and happy disbelief on his face, and tells Truman and Hawk, “He did it again. Wow, I know exactly where Jack Rabbits Palace is, my dad when I was a little kid, he would take me to this place, near where his station used to be, it was our make-believe world, where we made up stories. I’m the one who named it Jack Rabbit’s Palace“. Truman is amazed that Briggs foresaw all this, and tells Bobby that whatever this is, they will go up there 2 days from now, Bobby will lead the way just as Briggs wanted.
253 — the first time we hear of this is from the Evolution of The Arm, when the Good Dale is about to leave the lodge, it tells us, 253 time and time again. It was the time that Dale left the red room and Dopplecooper should have re-entered but swapped places with Dougie instead. This time is important, not once but twice in the next few days. There’s no way to know if this is meant to be 2.53 am or pm or if these times are 12 or 24 or even 36 hours apart, it sounds like Bobby, Hawk and Truman are going to be spending a lot of time in the woods. And where in the woods? only Bobby knows for sure. What is 253 yards east of Jack Rabbits Palace? Could it be Glastonberry Grove? The opening to the portal to the Lodge? Briggs covered up the location from prying eyes, only trusting his son with that information. What is the importance of having to take soil from Jack Rabbits Palace to that location? Is it sacred soil that is needed to gain entry through the sycamore trees?
Remember back in Part 1, Hawk speaks to the Log Lady on the phone, in the woods at night. I don’t believe that scene was told in sequence. He has never mentioned seeing the red drapes shimmering in the trees at Glastonberry Grove before, which you know is quite a major revelation! So I think this was a glimpse of the future, and Hawk may be there to greet someone. But I have a bad feeling about this, Hawk does not want to face Dopplecooper alone. Hopefully, the Good Dale will also be there to face his shadow self for a final showdown.
Then Truman notices the second piece of paper. It was what we have seen before, the message that was delivered to Agent Cooper in room 315 at the Great Northern, by Briggs that he had received at the station. While ‘The owls are not what they seem’ was not shown, the lower part of the message, ‘Cooper, Cooper’, is there. Two Coopers, Hawk, you are on the right track, my man!
Back in Buckhorn Gordon and Tammy join Diane whilst she smokes outside. Gordon glances between Diane and her cigarette for what feels like an eternity until he finally dares to take it from her a take a drag. Clearly a past time he misses. Tammy shimmies on the spot awkwardly and gives Gordon a telling off for being weak.
Next Tammy joins Bill Hastings in the interview room of the police station. He is wailing, handcuffed, head in his hands. This is a man in the pits of despair, unable to handle or understand what is happening to him. Tammy introduces herself, he wails ‘oh god’ when she tells him she’s FBI.
She asks him if he is the author of an online journal or blog entitled ‘The Search for the Zone’. Bill says that he is and tells her that he writes about different things. She asks him if approximately two weeks ago he wrote an entry about encountering what he described as an alternate reality? Bill replies, “A different dimension, yes, but it’s real, it’s all real”. Tammy asks him how long he’s been interested in this subject and he tells her, “Many years, I do a lot of reading“, “But this time you wrote that you actually found and entered such a place?” she asks, to which Bill agrees, “and that whilst in this place you wrote, and I quote, we met the Major?“.
Bill tells Tammy that, “Ruth was very good at uncovering hidden records, and she said that if we went to a certain place, at a certain time, we would enter the dimension, and make contact with a certain person. And so we went there”. “And that was where you found the Major?” Preston asks, “He was hiding there, or hibernating as he said, and that other people were maybe going to find him, and that he wanted to go to a different place so he asked us to get him numbers, important numbers, co-ordinates, and we found them in the place he told us to go, a secure military database”. The camera pans to Albert’s face who is staring hard at this interview taking place. Gordon glances at him but he doesn’t turn his head. Is there more to this look? Albert likes to make out that he thinks all this is a load of BS, but let’s face it, Gordon has Albert on these cases for a reason, because whilst he is sceptical, he is not ignorant, he will deal with anything he’s presented with, with an open mind. So what is he thinking at this point? He’s been in contact with Jeffries, he may know a lot more than he’s letting on. All the FBI Agents are doing a great job of looking untrustworthy right now. Tammy, with her strange awkwardness, bombshell wiggle and overexpression, may just be the most innocent of the lot of them, and possibly the most concise.
Tammy asks Hastings if he still has the coordinates, he tells her no, that Ruth wrote them on her hand so that she wouldn’t forget. She asks, “What happened then William?” “We brought him back the numbers last Thursday, and then I don’t know what happened, these others came in and they grabbed me by the neck and they pushed me down and they asked me, ‘What’s your wife’s name? What’s your wife’s name? Phyllis I said. I didn’t kill Ruth, I didn’t kill her, you have to believe me, I loved her, it’s all my fault, this is all my fault it never should have happened“. Preston takes out a page with the photographs of six male faces and asks Bill to identify the Major. He does so and circles his face and signs and dates the photograph. 29th September. We know now for sure we are on the same date as the events happening in Twin Peaks.
This should be the year 2014, 25 years after Briggs’ assumed death, however, the Dossier which forms the Secret History of Twin Peaks has not yet been found as far as we are aware, and shouldn’t be until 17th July 2016 — but it seems that this could happen soon. If not found at Ruth Davenport’s apartment, then at whatever crime scene they will find next. The strange thing is that Tammy Preston was the investigator of the Dossier, but appeared to have no prior knowledge of Major Briggs, who is of course revealed as the Archivist/Author of the Dossier. She also appears to know very little about Agent Cooper. Even if this was set in 2016, no mention has been made of the dossier find which would have happened only 2 months prior – and at what crime scene was it discovered? This is one mystery I cannot quite comprehend just yet, but maybe what Bill Hastings is about to tell us could give us a clue.
Tammy asks Hastings again, “Can you tell me what happened?”, Bill replies, a bit more calmly now, “We gave him the numbers, and he started to float up, and he said some words, Cooper, Cooper, right before his head disappeared, it was something like no-one had ever seen before, I’ve never seen anything like it and I’ve never read anything like it, you don’t know! you weren’t there!” After stumbling on his words a bit he says, “It was beautiful. And then Ruth was dead and it was so terrible and I had to hold her, and then I woke up and I was in my home, I was in my home!” Preston asked if the Major killed Ruth, “No, there were so many people there, you have to believe me, please, I didn’t kill Ruth, I loved her, I loved her, I don’t know whats happening to me, why can’t you help me please” he begs. “We were good together, we were going to go to the Bahamas, we were going to scuba dive”. He continues to tell Tammy of their future plans through tears and wails. “Fruitcake anyone?” Albert dryly asks. But as we know only too well, under that hard exterior is a man with a golden heart, there is no way he hasn’t been moved by the traumatic plight of Bill Hastings, and there is no way that Hastings is lying about all this.
So where do we start? Firstly, Hastings originally said to his wife Phyllis that this was a dream. He said he had gone with Ruth to meet the Major at a certain place but was this place actually their subconscious or a physical place? He woke up after this even in his home, so where had they been?
We don’t how long Bill and Ruth had been having an affair, they probably met at the library and shared an interest in the unknown. Ruth would have had access to all sorts of documents being a librarian, information she could easily share with Bill. Bill had his own website, and it really exists, in all its glory here: TheSearchForTheZone
The real Search for The Zone website with a pic of Bill HastingsThe site is a treasure chest full of a wealth of interesting clues. I won’t go into it all here as would take a year to explain but have a good read and a good listen. I am sure that in some form all the answers lie in there somewhere.
What I will tell you is that there are co-ordinates hiding at the bottom, and those co-ordinates lead to the following places:
2144-2154 Lookout Mt Rd, Spearfish, South Dakota 57783
12452 Apple Rd, Whitewood, South Dakota 57793
These places really exist in our world if you google them. They are pretty remote, but you can even find out who the recent owners of 12452 Apple Rd is, a Mr Doug E Kymala.
Image courtesy of Google Maps
So where did Ruth find Major Briggs initially? The books in her apartment were probably the most important references, she may have found him in there. She and Bill managed to gain access to where Briggs had been hibernating. An interesting choice of words. To hibernate means to lay dormant. Did Briggs discover a way and a place to sleep for many years, a place where he could just rest and contemplate and not age for 25 years? Did he stay there all that time, or did he return to our world now and then, leaving his prints at 16 different locations, a map of his travels? Could he not stay in one place as he was being hunted by Dopplecooper, or something or someone worse, worse even than even BOB himself? We can assume that he did not die in the fire at Listening Post Alpha, that he somehow managed to escape when he realised that Coop was not who he seemed, he put the M.A.Y.D.A.Y. protocols into action and entered into another dimension, hiding out, contemplating and waiting for the right time to step into action. The fact that he didn’t age during that time hints that he was not at the red room/lodge, as we know that you can and do age in there. Was he in the White Lodge or perhaps in Naido’s place? Is that a place between times? Non-existence? It appears that he chose to be there, but knew that ‘they’ were coming for him, and needed to find somewhere else. Who are ‘they’? Was it Dopplecooper and friends, or The Woodsmen or perhaps Jeffries or Mother? Was it all of them? Are ‘they’ all working together, or do they all have their own objectives?
The Woodsmen seem to have a keen interest in Major Briggs. They have been hanging around Buckhorn PD, perhaps waiting for some information on his whereabouts. When we first saw that charcoal Woodsman in the cell, he was sat almost as if he was frozen in time. Dormant. His body disappeared and his head floated off, his mouth opening and closing as it drifted away. Was he saying, ‘Cooper, Cooper’? It’s very familiar to what Bill said happened to Briggs when he met him in ‘The Zone’. So what is the Woodsman doing? Mimicking him? Taking a message from the memory of Bill Hastings to report back to goodness knows who? Bill said it was a dream, was this a dream he was lulled into by the Woodsman’s water and well chant? How was Briggs finally found? Bill said that he told them where to find the coordinates for a place for him to move to at a secure military base. They found them and returned to visit Briggs in ‘The Zone’ for the second time. But had they been followed? The ‘others’ found them there, held Bill down, and it sounds like Ruth was murdered at this point, her head removed from her body. Did they keep her body as the coordinates were written on her hand? Briggs now having the coordinates gave up his body and floated off into the ether. Were the coordinates he received for the place where he saw Cooper, on the platform with Naido as his head floated past, he gave him the Blue Rose message? Was that Briggs’ final message, or is he still out there?
The people who held Bill down demanded to know his wife’s name, why? It may suggest that Dopplecooper was not present in ‘The Zone’ as we are pretty sure Dopplecooper was perfectly aware of Bill’s wife. Phyllis appeared to recognise Dopplecooper when he was waiting in her house, shortly before he shot her dead. Bill had also suspected that Phyllis was having an affair with not only George Bauser, their lawyer, but someone else too, Dopplecooper? And Phyllis was fully aware that Bill was having an affair with Ruth Davenport. Did Dopplecooper tell her about it? I feel less inclined to believe that Phyllis was manufactured now, more that Dopplecooper felt she was predictable when he commented that, “she followed human nature perfectly”. What had he wanted her to do that she did as expected? The coordinates on Hastings’ website reveal the addresses above in South Dakota, but if you click on them it sends you to a video of the Convenience Store, is that where it can be found? Is this where Briggs had been hiding out? It’s highly unlikely as the Store is a hive for evil to hang out, he wouldn’t be safe there. Is this the co-ordinates for the place he wanted to move to? A safe place? It is possible. Or are they the coordinates for a destination already found — The Zone? Gordon, Albert and Tammy are going to want to know where this is.
At some point before his final departure, Briggs must have visited Dougie Jones to take his ring. That is if he took the ring knowing that it would eventually lead to the discovery of the true Agent Cooper. Briggs saw the future that is for sure, and this was a sure-fire way of helping Cooper back home. The original Dougie was wearing the owl cave ring when we first met him, so at some point, prior someone swapped his wedding ring for the owl cave ring. Would that have been MIKE or the Evolution of the Arm, or Briggs himself? When did Hastings’ secretary, Betty die? We heard from Macklay that she was killed in a car explosion. Of course, it is probable that was put into action by Dopplecooper — was that one of the messages sent to Mr Todd? The red box message on his computer screen? We know that Dopplecooper wanted to extract the coordinates to Jack Rabbits Palace from Betty — did he manage to do that before her demise? He has been incarcerated for the majority of this time, and after travelling from Yankton Prison he was with Ray, who shot him, not quite dead.
So how or when did all this happen? Or did someone else do his dirty work? Why did Ruth have to die? Or perhaps the more relevant question is why was Bill spared? Dopplecooper has killed everyone that had a chance of knowing the coordinates to Jack Rabbits Palace, except Bill Hastings, who now is in such a state of turmoil he may never recover. If the FBI find Ruth’s hand they may have a hope of also finding the location. If Dopplecooper killed Ruth Davenport he would have had the coordinates then, so it must be someone else. My guess is Jeffries.
Are Jeffries and Dopplecooper working together or are they rivals? The last time Dopplecooper spoke to Jeffries it appeared that it might not be him, and it certainly wasn’t his Southern drawl we heard on the phone, it was more of a New York accent, so who is this mystery man? Did Briggs receive the messages ‘Cooper, Cooper’ and ‘The owls are not what they seem’ in 1989 from himself, from the future? We know that Briggs had travelled through time before. We assumed we had witnessed his first ‘abduction’ in the woods, but perhaps it was not. Betty Briggs told the Sheriff’s Dept that he had gone missing several times before and that this was just part of his classified work, she didn’t question it. The hooded figure in the trees, was that Briggs visiting himself? What effect could meeting yourself have on the rest of the world? Does this create some sort of blip in reality — can incidents such as this change the course of history? Create an alternate reality?
As always I have more questions than answers, but I hope this has given you some food for thought, until next week!
