Ann Rule End of the Dream

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had tried to cover his scars with makeup. Poor guy.
And then he noticed the black gun in the man's right hand. Scott no
longer bothered with the tellers' money. He knew exactly where the real
money was now. He announced, "This is a robbery. Who's the vault teller?
"
"He's on vacation, " the manager said, and the bank robber seemed to
accept this. "I have the keys, but it's only my second day here, " he
lied, "and I don't have the codes."
"Then open up the teller drawers." The Sea first manager thought
rapidly, trying to thwart the robber. "I'm sorry, " he said, "I don't
have the keys to that area either." But, as luck would have it, two bank
employees, unaware that a robbery was in progress, walked out of the
vault where they had been counting money. They carried stacks of bills
in their arms. The man with the grotesque makeup on his face couldn't
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smile, but there was a grin in his voice as he spotted them and said,
"What do we have here? " Scott Scurlock's phenomenal luck had held. It
was almost like the card games in Hawaii and the football parlays in Las
Vegas. Once more, he had stumbled onto the mother lode.
He ordered the bank manager and the two tellers back into the vault.
He pulled a lime green bag out of his tan parka. He stuffed it full of
money. Every few moments, he darted a look out into the bank itself to
check on what was happening there. "Who has access to the money in the
ATM? " The bank manager shook his head. "No one does." Apparently
satisfied, Scott prepared to leave. But first he motioned to a bank
courier who had just walked in, unaware, and he put the courier into the
vault with the other employees. Then he told the customers in the lobby
to stay where they were for a full minute. "If I hear an alarm, " he
warned, convincingly, "I'll come back and someone will get hurt.
" Once again, nobody disobeyed his orders. By the time the bank
employees emerged from the vault and called corporate security, Scott
had vanished. Scott parked next to Steve at a prearranged location ten
blocks from the bank. He quickly removed his makeup and then he tailed
Steve's car as he zoomed onto the freeway entrance there. It was a piece
of cake. They stayed on I-5 until they took the off-ramp just south of
Olympia that was only minutes from the treehouse property.
Scott and Steve drove both their cars into the barn, closed the doors
behind them and counted out the money there. Scott may have been a
little disappointed, he hadn't gotten as much as he had the year before.
But it sure wasn't bad, $98,571. He handed Steve his share, $5,000.
Scott explained that this was a fair split. He was the one who took all
the chances. He planned everything, and it was he who had gone into the
bank. He was the one who risked getting shot or arrested or recognized.
They were exhausted more from the tension of the day than any
physical effort and they saved the clean-up for the next day, when they
pitched out or burned the clothes and other items that they felt were
too recognizable to use again. Back in the bank, the FBI reviewed the
tape from the bank's cameras, the frames showing a now familiar if
bizarre face with a grotesque mask and false chin and nose, topped by a
blondish red wig. There was something about the robber's stance,
something that marked him as an athlete even in the grainy bank footage.
But try as they might, they could not see beneath the mask and the
makeup. Taking $15,000 to launder, Steve Meyers left for Las Vegas a few
days after the robbery. Back on Overhulse Road, Scott filled his plastic
buckets, and reburied them on his land. Now there was enough cash for
many, many rainy days. Steve moved to San Francisco before Christmas to
live with the new woman in his life. She was a flight attendant whom
he'd met on one of his many flights between Seattle and Nevada. Her name
was Sari* and she was originally from Croatia. The plain fact was that
Steve didn't want to live in Washington State any longer. Like Mark
Biggins, he sought a geographical solution in an attempt to avoid
Scott's plans. Except for Kevin Meyers and Bobby Gray, no one seemed
able to flat out tell Scott "No" and make it stick. Neither Steve nor
Mark were truly weak men but circumstances and fate had made them both
susceptible to Scott's persuasive arguments. Steve Meyers had no plan
to participate in another bank robbery, but he didn't plan not to,
either. He had deluded himself into believing that the man on the other
end of the Motorola short-wave radio wasn't really a professional bank
robber.
Scott wasn't going to do it forever, and Steve tried to tell himself
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that he had been there only to look out for a friend. Once in
California, Steve began to sell some of his art again, and looked around
for a studio. If he could only get established there. But the fact was,
everything moved too slowly, Steve was soon out of money, the $5,000
Scott had given him hadn't lasted very long, so when Scott called and
asked Steve to meet him in Reno to talk about the next robbery, Steve
went. He gambled with the money Scott gave him. Steve was becoming
addicted to gambling, exhilarated by the ambiance of the smoky casinos
in Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe. Scott?
Scott's whole life was a gamble against long odds. Early in January
1994, Steve capitulated and drove back to Olympia. A few weeks later, he
took part in his second bank robbery. On January 21, 1994, he and Scott [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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