The End of the Dream (26 page)

He spent New Year’s Eve, 1994 at Scott’s place. With the New Year, they began planning the next bank robbery. Scott seemed to brighten up with the new challenge. He, of course, knew nothing about the impending mobilization of the Violent Crimes Task Force. He was confident that things could only get better in his career as a bank robber. If he’d been able to score big when he knew a lot less than he knew now, he should be able to steal a virtual fortune. Pointing to a map of Seattle, he showed Steve his top pick for a January hit, the First Interstate Bank in Wallingford. He liked the Wallingford District because he’d never robbed a bank in that area before. It was due west of the University of Washington. Although Wallingford had once been a fairly stodgy neighborhood, it had undergone a resurgence and had become fashionably funky in the nineties. Scott chose it because he liked the fact that it had a thriving commercial area with popular restaurants and shops as well as streets lined with old houses.

Scott took Steve out to eat at an Italian restaurant and, as they lingered over Chianti and biscotti, they watched the Filst Interstate Bank. There was something exhilarating about planning a new project, something not unlike the thrill they both felt when they walked into a Nevada casino. Like all gamblers, they didn’t think of losing, they thought only of winning big. They made two or three trips to Wallingford to check out their new robbing grounds. And it either didn’t bother Scott, or he didn’t know, that the north precinct of the Seattle Police Department was located in Wallingford. If he succeeded in his next robbery, Hollywood would be stealing the cheese from directly beneath the rat’s nose. Perhaps that made the game even more challenging. Scott had two mechanics in Olympiaunknown even to Stevebuy the station wagon and Chevy Astrovan that they would use in Wallingford. Everything was set.

Scott was anxious to erase the memory of the last trip to Portland and eager to get a new cache of money that would allow him to travel away from the Northwest during the rainy season. He appreciated the rain, however, on Wednesday morning, January 18, 1995, pelting rain, drenching rain it was all perfect bank-robbing weather. By this time, Scott Scurlock approached a bank robbery almost as an athlete would prepare for competition.

He had to be up, in top form mentally and physically. He always popped a tape into the deck of his van, something that energized him as he headed north on I-5 in his now-familiar makeup. Not surprisingly, he preferred the soundtracks from action movies.

Even someone who knew him well could never recognize him behind the translucent salmon mask, with the beaked nose and jutting chin.

He had truly mastered the ritual of putting on his makeup, and enjoyed the long process of becoming Hollywood. A whole new persona emerged during the drive from the treehouse to whichever bank he had selected, an invincible man who could make crowds cower and do whatever he asked of them. A little before 10,30 A. M. on this Wednesday morning, Scott parked the station wagon on Densmore, the street next to the west entrance of the Wallingford bank.

Now that he had had time to think about it, he was no longer upset that he’d been seen near the Queen Anne Bank six months before, it was good, really, for witnesses to see the vehicle he drove up in since he would be switching cars later.

Then the cops would be looking for the wrong vehicle. It was 10:40 when the woman teller in the Wallingford bank looked up to see that a man waving a gun had taken over the bank. He pushed a customer toward others who had been herded into the center of the bank. As she felt prickles of shock, he turned the gun on the teller, and she looked at him, this strange unhuman figure whose face was not really a face at all. He asked first for “hundreds and fifties.” Even in the midst of her fear, she thought what a wonderful, deep voice he had. Later, she would describe it “like a radio disc jockey’s. A classic voice.” She took large bills out of the drawer and placed them carefully on the counter. “I want twenties, tens, and fives, too, “ he said, scooping them into a blue nylon bag. “I want all your money.” Now the robber saw that there was a dye pack in his bag, and for the first time he seemed nervous. “Will the dye pack set off an alarm? “ he asked.

“No, “ she answered. “Nobody pulls an alarm or I’ll shoot, “ he said roughly, his voice even deeper. “Who’s the vault teller? “ The other bank employees pointed to the teller he was already talking to, and she told him she had to get her key. He grabbed her arm and walked her toward the vault. Earlier, he’d ordered another teller to get off the phone, and she had appeared to respond. But, instead, she only set the phone down on her desk. As soon as he turned his back, she picked the phone up and whispered, “We’re being robbed. Call 911.” He didn’t hear her.

He stood at the vault, ready to make a substantial withdrawal for the first time in many months. But he didn’t get that far, the teller and a customer service rep heard a disembodied voice coming from his coat pocket, a voice shouting in panic, “You’re out of there! You’re out of there! “ It was, of course, Steve who had just picked up the Seattle operator dispatching police units to the bank. The tellers realized now that the robber carried some kind of radio or walkie-talkie. In an instant, he was gone, carrying his blue bag with the dye pack and, unknown to him, a pack of bait bills. A number of things had already gone wrong, although Scott Scurlock didn’t know about all of them. He hadn’t seen the teller on the phone, nor had he seen a customer who slipped out of the bank. That customer had warned another woman not to come in, and she had hurried to a clinic and called 911. She had also observed a man rush out the side door, turn left and jog south.

She would describe him as, “a white male, wearing a tan coat and a brown hat.” The description wasn’t much help but it was a piece of a mosaic that would, hopefully, be filled in by more witness statements.

The FBI team’s procedure was always very thorough, soon, they would talk to everyone who had the slightest bit of information about this bank robbery. The jogging man had disappeared down Densmore Street.

There, a woman sat with her son in a parked car. She looked up and saw the running man and watched him for several seconds. She saw him head to an old, yellow station wagon. Just as he neared the driver’s door, he swung his arm wide and flung a bag on the ground away from his vehicle.

Almost instantly a red cloud enveloped the bag but not the man.

He jumped behind the steering wheel and drove off. All of the money Scott had just stolen$11,924. It was in the abandoned bag. It would have done him no good, anyway it was stained with bright orange, indelible dye. His luck, such as it was, was still holding. If he had been holding the bag when it exploded, his skin, hair, clothing and car would be colored with the stuff that no amount of scrubbing would remove not for days. Steve Meyers had already headed south. His police scanner picked up a police dispatcher who was describing the station wagon Scott was driving.

Things weren’t going well at all, Steve wondered if he would ever see Scott again. This was the worst situation they had ever been in. He headed for their prearranged meeting place, south of Seattle, not really expecting Scott to be there. There was nothing else for Steve to do, and he tried not to panic. A mile away, Scott was anxious to dump the yellow station wagon, he had never planned to drive it back to Olympia, anyway and, now, he knew he had been seen. In one searing moment, his eyes had met the eyes of the woman waiting in the car. He had noted the recognition in those eyes not of him, personally but they must have known that he had just robbed a bank. As brief as the encounter was, it seemed to take hours, and she had had plenty of time to get his license number. As he headed south on Stoneway, he wondered if the yellow vehicle bore telltale streaks of orange.

Why did it have to be yellow? The dye wouldn’t have shown up so much on a dark car. He still wore his makeup. He didn’t dare risk stopping to wipe it off. He was grateful for the rain that rolled down his windshield and the driver’s window. Against all odds, Scott made it back to where he had parked his van. He leapt from the Chevy wagon and into the van. Once the exchange was made, he felt better, although his heartbeat sounded in his ears. He had the rag to wipe his makeup off but he still didn’t use it. If he was stopped, it would be all over. And that would be ironic to be captured after a bank robbery where he got no money at all.

Nobody stopped him. Scott caught up with Steve Meyers on Highway 9South, the road that paralleled the I-5 Freeway. There, finally, Scott took the time to peel off his chin, nose, the clear mask, the wig and mustache.
 
With trembling hands, he wiped a rag over the spirit gum that still marked his face. And then it was OK. He was Scott Scurlock again, driving a different car than the bank robber had, wearing his own face again. He was so confident that he wouldn’t be recognized, in fact, that he and Steve Meyers stopped at a restaurant near the Se’tac International Airport. As they ate lunch, they talked in low voices.

Scott told Steve about getting the dye pack. “This was the first time I ever grabbed a dye pack, “ he said incredulously.

They didn’t know how much Scott had had in the blue bag. He knew he had never gotten near the vault money, but he was unaware that he’d risked so much for only $11,000. All he knew for sure was that, for the second time, they had nothing. And this wasn’t Portland, Oregon, this was Seattle, where he knew the streets, the banks, the demographics. If anything, Scott had planned the Wallingford job more meticulously than any robbery yet. His beginner’s luck seemed to have worn off completely.
 
Scott had been clever to dump the wagon as soon as he could, even though he still had his mask and makeup on. Several witnesses had memorized the license plate number of the 1981 Chevy Malibu. FBSPECIAL Agent Don Glasser ran the Washington plate through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Glasser and Special Agent Dawn Ringer visited the address in Tacoma that the department’s computers had spit out. The homeowner there nodded and said he had once owned a yellow Chevrolet wagon.

However, he had sold it two months before by placing an ad in the free Auto Trade magazine. Any one in western Washington could pick up a copy in stores and supermarkets. Glasser asked who had bought the station wagon, not really hoping for much helpful information. Nor did he get it. The seller shrugged. “A man phoned, and then he came to our house on foot after dark. He was white, very polite, good grammar.

He said he wanted a car to haul things in. He gave me $800 cash. He took the car and the title with him.” The seller couldn’t describe the man any more than that. The car? Just a six-cylinder Chevy with automatic transmission, air conditioning, and a tape player. It had once been brown, but he’d painted it yellow.
 
Obviously, the new owner had not bothered to change the title. He had had good reason not to put his name and address in the state computer bank. Who he was or where he lived was anybody’s guess. Scott had never been worried that authorities would find any evidence inside the Chevy Malibu that would lead back to him.
 
He and Steve had wiped it down with care, not once but several times.
 
There was nothing there at all he was confident about that. He was right. The FBI found it, processed it, and gleaned absolutely nothing of evidentiary value.

While Scott was evaluating the failed takeover of the Wallingford Bank, more than a thousand miles away in California, Mark Biggins and Traci Marsh were getting ready to move to a house in Oxnard. For Mark, it was almost as if the two bank robberies in Washington State in 1992 had never happened. Nearly three years had gone by and no one in their new world knew the truth. Traci and Mark hadn’t seen Scott Scurlock at all during most of 1993 and not once in 1994. Traci continued to care for disabled patients and Mark worked at various low-paying jobs. Sometimes he sold squid that would become calamari in upscale restaurants, sometimes he worked in a leather clothing factory. The money he’d buried after the Olympia robbery near Christmas of 1992 was gone, but his relationship with his daughter, Lori, was wonderful and that was all that was really important to him.

He, Traci, and Annie continued to share parenting, although they lived in separate homes. There was a downside to Mark’s life, however. Mark and Traci had never broken the addiction to methamphetamines, an addiction begun during Scott’s treehouse work parties. It was an expensive habit in two ways, it cost money they didn’t have, and it gave them false energy and flawed their reasoning. Mark still wrote poetry, and he still dreamed of better days. He wasn’t using his college education. He seemed to have lost the drive that he had once had. He couldn’t seem to find a job teaching. Maybe he didn’t try.

On soft nights, he played his guitar, gazing out into the dark. It reminded him of his favorite painting, Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” Mark Biggins was the most likable guy anyone could hope to meet, he still had his strong compassion for others, and he was the last person in the world that anyone might peg as a criminal, much less a bank robber. But he was a melancholy and indecisive man who abused substances that took the edge off the feelings of depression that threatened to destroy him.

Up in Seattle, at the end of January 1995, Scott Scurlock was worried.

Once the buried money from his last big robberies was gone, he was edgy and anxious. His lifestyle depended on his being able to I travel whenever he wanted. Now, he lived only for adventure, physical challenge, instant gratification, and as strange as it may sound his friends. In his own mind, it is likely that Scott still viewed himself as the benevolent leader of his own particular pack, the man who was always there when his friends needed him. He apparently had no feelings of guilt about his secret life. “No one ever robs a bank, “ he once said. “He only robs an insurance company.” And Scott insisted that everyone knew insurance companies were fat cats, well able to lose a little of the cream off the top of their profits. He told Kevin that he didn’t see anything morally wrong with robbing a bank. “But you put yourself in a category by how you use your energy, “ Kevin had countered, wondering if Scott was going to come right out and admit the truth. “When someone pulls out a gun and shoves it in someone’s face, he becomes a bully. I don’t honor bullies. If I ever saw anyone robbing a bank, I would make a split decision. In fact, I’ve already made up my mind. I’d tackle the son of a bitch. If he kills me, I get killed. I don’t go out for no reason and I saved the day.” Scott was silent, his face unreadable. “Of course, “ Kevin laughed, trying to lighten the moment, “I suppose I could say, Pardon me sir, can I help you carry all that money to the car? “ Scott forced a grin, and changed the subject.
 
The fact was Scott Scurlock was out of money.