The End of the Dream (2 page)

He ran out into the darkness beyond the streetlights. Inside, they waited with dread, expecting to hear shots. But none came.

No one but the vault teller suspected that they had all just been part of one of the biggest bank robberies in Northwest history. In less than fifteen minutes, the robbers had managed to carry away more money than most people make in a lifetime. This was not the first time that these robbers had struck Northwest banks. Far from it. This was at least the twentieth bank hit.

The shorter man had become the quarry and the focal point of ultimate frustration for some of the most skilled investigators in the Seattle Police Department and the Seattle FBI office. Just when predictable patterns and a distinctive MO began to emerge, he would slip through the invisible net that had been laid out for him. He and any accomplice he brought with him were wraithlike, it was almost as if they ran from the banks and vaporized. No one knew who they were or what they looked like without their masks.

They had to live somewhere, there were probably people who loved them and worried about them. Somewhere, probably within fifty miles of Seattle, they quite likely lived outwardly normal lives.

For the moment, they were known only by the profile they had filled in with their actions and their disguises. The investigators tracking them knew more about who they weren’t than who they were. Kevin, Steve, and Scott. The Gordon* Meyers family were part of a new generation of young marrieds who emerged after the Second World War.

The draft and good wages in defense plants tore extended families apart and encouraged people to leave their hometowns and move halfway across the country. Families who had gone generations without a divorce now began to lose their cohesion. Gordon Meyers was a printer and a lithographer, Joanna was a commercial artist. From the outside, their marriage seemed happy enough. But Gordon became unpleasant when he drank, and he was argumentative and punishing with his wife and children. Only rarely did he praise their successes, while he was quick to comment on their failures. Sometimes Joanna thought that, without him, she and the children might enjoy a simpler and quieter life.

The Meyers marriage blew up completely in 1962, and they were divorced.

Joanna did the best she could raising their four children, always looking for a better life. Sometimes they found it, more often, they lived a hard scrabble existence. Their family solidarity made up for what they didn’t have in the way of financial stability. Dana, Steven, Kevin, and Randy Meyers were Joanna’s babies. She vowed to do whatever she could to nurture them and allow them to be successful, creative, and happy. Each of them was brilliantly gifted, and that wasn’t just a mother’s prejudice. It was true. Dana was fifteen at the time of the divorce, Steve thirteen, Kevin ten, and Randy eight.

Kevin Meyers, the third child, second son, recalled his childhood with more humor than pathos, “I thought dog biscuits were cookiesi’m not kidding. They had all the nutrients you needed. And, we ate a lot of mayonnaise sandwiches. Hey, if we didn’t have bologna, mayonnaise was good enough.” Although Joanna’s children had completely different personalities, they had all inherited their parents’ artistic talent.

She and Gordon might not have had traits that complemented each other in a way that made for a sound marriage, but they had created remarkable offspring.

Dana, born in Kansas City in 1947, was beautiful, loving and graceful, and a wonderful dancer, compared to other girls taking dance lessons, she was a lily among toadstools. Steven, the oldest son, was born on February 19, 1950. Even as a child, he had a somewhat brooding when and often looked angry when he wasn’t, but he was brilliant. Kevin, who came along in 1953, was cheerfully hyperactive, a natural athlete, and as sensitive as a puppy. Randy, born in 1955, was musically talented and perhaps the most pragmatic of them all. He set his mind on a goal and went for it. Kevin was a handful. He was born long before l children were recognized as being hyperactive and before anyone knew that reading difficulties were often caused by dyslexia.

He could draw or paint anything, but he needed a year to read a book.

He had to be outside, and he often drove Joanna Meyers to distraction.

“Sometimes, she’d put me in my room for some reason, and I would bounce off the walls and yell, Lemme out! Lemme out! I just couldn’t stand being caged up.” All the Meyers boys were imaginative and bursting with high spirits. When they watched “Sea Hunt, “ they hooked vacuum cleaner hoses to their backs and “swam” across the living room rug.

They used the couch for a bronco when they watched television westerns.

Joanna just sighed and shooed them outside. Like his siblings, Kevin Meyers was raised in Overland Park, an upscale suburb of Kansas City, Kansas, before his parents divorced. But Kevin almost didn’t live to grow up.

When he was three, he was hit by a car and barely survived. It was to be only the first of many brushes Kevin would have with death. Perhaps because of this, he was an unusually spiritual child. He recalled “astrally projecting” his mind when he was well under twelve. He thought everyone could do that. Joanna Meyers had been largely raised by a woman named Martha Ebertwho was not a blood relation, but who was a loving, dear person. As a toddler, Joanna couldn’t say “Martha” so she called her foster mother, “Mamoo.” Mamoo had always welcomed Joanna’s children into her home, too. The little boys \ liked to watch television with Mamoo. Munching popcorn, they sat on the floor at her feet and watched the screen avidly. “Mamoo loved Dragnet’ and Perry Mason, “ Kevin remembered. “We liked those shows and she’d let us sit there and watch with her. She loved Lawrence Welk too but we could never understand why.
 
Every time the bad guy got caught on Perry Mason’ or Dragnet, Mamoo used to tell us very seriously, Remember this, boys, Crime doesn’t pay. We believed her, too.

“ After their parents’ divorce, the Meyers’ kids were rudely uprooted from the life they had known in Overland Park. Dana, who seemed years older than she really was, moved into her own apartment in Kansas City.

She taught dance while she made plans to go to New York City. Kevin and Randy went to live with their maternal grandmother. She was married to her second husband, a traveling contractor, whose jobs took him all over Kansas. “We lived in this little trailer, “ Kevin remembered, “And we’d go where the work was. I don’t think we went to any school more than six weeks at a time that year.” Perhaps the hardest hit by his parents’ split, thirteen-year-old Steven stayed with his mother.

He didn’t like the man Joanna was dating, even though John Harmon* was quite willing to accept all of Joanna’s children. A little over a year later, Joanna and John Harmon were married and they moved to Irving, Texas. Her three boys went with them. Steve hated Texas, and he soon ran away. He was eventually picked up by the police and taken to a juvenile facility. He refused to return to his mother so Gordon Meyers agreed to let Steve live with him in Kansas City. Kevin and Randy Meyers were not as overtly rebellious, they simply neglected to go to school most of the time. “We found a treehouse close to the place where we were living, “ Kevin recalled. “Randy and I spent our time that year fixing it up, and we hardly ever went to school. I flunked seventh grade.” Knowing that he would have to repeat his first year of junior high in the fall, Kevin worried about his father’s reaction.

Although Gordon Meyers had accepted his oldest son into his home, he had done so reluctantly. He had never supported any of his children emotionally, it was as if he had blinders on when it came to knowing what his children needed. At least Steve was his first son, Gordon looked less favorably upon Kevin and Randy especially when he heard that they had goofed away a whole school year playing hookey. “My Mom sent Randy and me to Kansas City that summer to stay with my dad, “ Kevin said. “I guess maybe she thought he’d shape us up. We traveled up there with only our laundry bags and our guitars.” Gordon Meyers met his younger sons all risht, but he didn’t take them home. He was disgusted at their behavior in the school year just past. He told them he was taking them to their sister’s place. “You’re not coming home with me, “ he said flatly. Asked how old Dana was in the summer of 1964, Kevin recalled first that she was well into her twenties.

She wasn’t she was only seventeen. He seemed surprised when that was pointed out to him. Dana lived in a tiny little apartment, but she took her L eleven- and thirteen-year-old brothers in and cared for them all summer. “I felt terribly rejected, “ Kevin recalled, “having my dad turn us away like that.” Steve stayed on with his father, and graduated from Lillis High School in Kansas City in 1968, where he had shown real promise as a sculptor. Across town, Dana was modeling and taking dance classes. Many states away, Kevin was constantly drawing and Randy was taking music lessons. Gordon Meyers’ contributions to the family finances were minimal. He had promised to send Joanna $35 a week, but his payments were spotty at best. He was a union man and received a fair salary which he promptly invested. Raised in the Great Depression, Gordon was more concerned about putting money away for his retirement than he was with supporting his children. Joanna’s dream had always been to find a nice town where her kids would be safe, someplace where she could find a good job and buy a house. The move to the Dallas area had proved disappointing. None of the boys had been happy there. She knew she and John hadn’t found the right place yet.

One day, she read an article in a magazine about a model city that had been built near Washington, DC. It was called Restonreston, Virginia.

This perfect city was the creation of Robert E. Simon, an entrepreneurial millionaire who sold his interest in Carnegie Hall to finance the city of his dreams. It would be within easy commuting distance of Washington, DC. but would still maintain the wholesomeness of small town America. Rather than being only a bedroom community for Washington, DC, Simon visualized a town where citizens could enjoy recreation, entertainment, shopping, and employment. There would be a low-density buffer on the western edge of Reston, and ten acres of parkland for every thousand people. In Simon’s diverse community, all ethnic groups, all races, all classes would be welcome. Located in Fairfax County, the third richest county in America, it would be the first city in the United States to truly welcome middle-class black families. It sounded like paradise to Joanna Meyers. Joanna was a small, pretty woman with soft black hair and lovely big eyes, she didn’t look very strong, but she was made of tough stuff. She and John had both survived some bad times. John was a brilliant electronic engineer. He had designed and built the first FM radio station in the Kansas City area, but he had lost it through business reverses. John agreed with Joanna that they should move to Reston. Kevin was thirteen and Randy was eleven when they moved again. The town had a population of ten thousand then, a fledgling project blossoming according to its original plan. It proved to be everything Joanna had hoped it would be. Reston had neat houses, modern townhouses, clean streets, small convenient mallslong before the concept of a shopping mall was generally accepted parks, bridges, and churches, all located against a background of rolling hills, clear rivers, and trees and fields in a wonderful bucolic setting. Every one in Reston was treated with respect. Nobody lived “on the wrong side of the tracks.” For the second time, Kevin enrolled in the seventh gradeat Herndon Junior High School. Randy, only a year behind him now, was in the sixth grade at Herndon Grade School. The family rented a townhouse near Lake Anne.

John had a new broadcast concept he was eager to explore, and Joanna had found a job as a commercial illustrator for the Arthur Young Company.
 
Things looked good.

Kevin Meyers was a welcome member of the track team at Herndon Junior High, if a half-hearted student. He was interested in art and girls but didn’t have the faintest idea how to approach them. Although he wasn’t that drawn to the church per se, Kevin soon found his way to the teen meetings sponsored by the Washington Plaza Baptist Church.

The meetings were held in the basement of the Reverend Bill Scurlock’s home where, rumor had it, it was the best place in town to meet girls.

Kevin and Randy showed up one night, spiffed and polished, and voiced their interest in the Baptist Church to Reverend Scurlock. “A couple of friends said we’d get to meet all the girls in town, “ Kevin remembered.

“That’s where I met Scotty. He was the minister’s sontwo years younger than I washe ran all over with Randy, but he and I were friends, too.
 
Scott was born the same week that Randy was. They were both a year behind me. Man, we were all wild then. We’d watch some show on television like Batman’ and we would pretend we were the guys on there.
 
We took chances. We played gang tag.

We’d climb up buildings and jump off the roofs, hang from bridges, run around in the dark. Scott was fearlesshe’d jump off a two-story building. He could get out of anywhere, and lose all of us.” The boys’ lives became the “game, “ and they sometimes had difficulty separating their daredevil pursuits from reality. All of them, especially Kevin Meyers and William “Scotty” Scurlock, were remarkably physically coordinated and absolutely reckless.

They couldn’t conceive that they would be hurt and because of that belief, perhaps, they weren’t. They had young bones and young muscles.

If their parents had had any idea what chances they were taking, they would have been horrified. But they all lived in Reston, the perfect, model town, where nothing really bad ever happened. Kevin, Randy, and Scott and the rest of the pubescent boys who went on “death-defying missions” around Reston weren’t a real gang. It was decades before street gangs would rear their heads. They were buddies, solid friends who formed loyalties that would last them a lifetime. They were, in a sense, like the boys in the movie Stand By Me, awkward socially, a little afraid of girls despite their protestations, and fighting to escape the watchful eyes of their parents. Kevin, however, envied Scott his parents. “It seemed to me that Scott had the perfect family his mom and dad were nice, and he had cool sisters. I could barely remember when my father lived with us and we were a regular family, “ Kevin says. He enjoyed Reverend Scurlock’s sermons, even as a junior high school kid.
 
“He had a plan. He had a place where he was leading you, and then he’d get to his point and it all worked.