The End of the Dream (40 page)

No blankets, no first aid supplies. There was some water in a twenty-gallon tank. If Scott Scurlock was trapped in there, how ironic that the man who liked to go first class all the way, who drank Dom Perignon and ate at the best restaurants, was holed up on the traditional day of feasting in a beat-up little camper. He was surely cold, hungry, and desperate. He might even believe that both his friends were dead, and feel remorse. And it had all been for nothing, $1,080,000 had slipped from his grasp. But the Scott Scurlock who could hike the Grand Canyon and climb Mount Rainier in tennis shoes and shorts, without food or water, might be capable of waiting out the police. If and when he surrendered, it would be on his own terms. He had trained his body to be his most important weapon, and he had survived before on far less than most men could. Shawn Johnson got a cup of hot chocolate from the mobile food station the fire department had set up for the officers. He tried to drink it, but his hands shook so much it kept spilling. He stayed at the command post with his supervisor and with Burden Pasenelli, the Special Agent in Charge of the Seattle FBI office. People kept telling Johnson, “Go home go home, “ but he shook his head. Mike Magan wondered what was happening at his folks’ house. Were they having dinner? Every officer there had someplace to go, and somebody missing them on this day. But nobody moved. At the downtown FBI offices, Special Agent Faye Greenlee received a phone call from Reverend William Scurlock. He said that he and his wife, Mary Jane, had learned from someone in Seattle probably Sabrina Adams that his son was being sought by the FBI. Bill Scurlock was calling from Denver, from the home of one of his daughters. He seemed concerned, of course, but sounded genuinely amazed that it might be his son the FBI wanted. Greenlee told Scurlock that she wanted him to hang up that Bill Waltz, one of the Seattle Police Department’s hostage negotiators, would be calling him immediately. It was essential that Waltz talk to him. After the hostage negotiators had learned whatever they could from Scott’s father that might help them bring him out of the camper without anyone being injured further, Faye Greenlee talked again to Reverend Scurlock. He said that he knew now that police had surrounded an area where his son was believed to be hiding. They also believed, apparently, that Scott was a bank robber who had shot at police. He said it was “unthinkable” that Scott would ever try to kill anyone. He didn’t think Scott would shoot at anyone unless, perhaps, he was faced with prison. Scurlock described his son as a gentle, caring, charismatic, and personable man. He told Faye Greenlee that Scott had many friends of both sexes but that he was also a loner who sometimes enjoyed being by himself. He hurried to point out, however, that Scott was certainly not an isolationist. As far as any experience Scott might have had with guns, all his father could think of was a time, when Scott was given a round-trip ticket to London for a high school graduation present. On the trip, he had spent time on an Israeli kibbutz near the Golan Heights. When he came home, he told his father that he had received training from the military there, including weaponry and self-protection, and the protection of others in the kibbutz.
 
His father said that Scott hadn’t visited their Sedona home since June, but that they were expecting him in December. He had never talked about financial difficulties.

His parents thought he earned his living as an “entrepreneur” and in carpentry and logging. A bank robber? Never! From the way his father described him to the FBI, Scott Scurlock sounded like the all-American son. As far as Bill Scurlock knew, Scott never drank hard liquor. He had stopped smoking marijuana years ago.

No, he would not do something like this for publicity or as a way to get attention. If he had not deliberately set out to get attention, Scott Scurlock-was certainly getting a great deal of it. Now, for the second day in a row, a peaceful family neighborhood in the northeast part of Seattle was a war zone. A few stray bullets had zinged through a dining room wall where turkey was being served. Most of the block’s residents had either evacuated by choice or at the Police Department’s request. A huge armored vehicle lumbered into the backyard where the camper sat with its shattered windows and bullet-pierced shell. The mammoth thing looked like an armadillo crouched over some of Mrs. Walker’s prize rosebushes. The afternoon wore on, and everyone watched the red and white camper. There had been no movement at all from inside, no response to the negotiators. It would be dark soon, Seattle was only three weeks away from the shortest day of the year. It would be full dark by five.
 
Mike Magan’s attention was drawn to some FBI agents who were escorting a woman toward the edge of the yard. He wondered who she was. She was blond and slender, slightly tansomething that stood out in Seattle in late November.

And she seemed terribly upset. He watched her, curious to see what part she might play in this endless drama. “I glanced at her shoes for some reason, “ Mike recalled. “And she was wearing high-top Converses.

And then I knew who she was who she had to be.

That’s his girlfriend! I thought.” She was. FBI agents had brought Sabrina Adams to the scene in the hope that she might be able to convince Scott to surrender and come out of the camper without any more shooting. His parents couldn’t fly from Denver in time to help, so Sabrina was it. “She was sobbing, “ Mike said.

“And biting her nails, pleading with Scott to give up.” It had been such a long day. Mike looked at Jon Dittoe and Mike Cruzan.

They had been part of his backup last night, and now they’d been involved in the gunfire on Thanksgiving Day. He saw that their faces were chalky with fatigue and emotion. They had all gone without sleep for too long now. Mike watched the girlfriend, and, as hysterical as she was, as fervent as her shouted pleas were, she didn’t seem to be getting through to Scott. There was no response from the camper at all. It was finally completely dark, and still nothing had happened.

They could not risk spending a long night out here with no action.

They had decided to force the barricaded fugitive out of the camper.

At 6,00 P. M. on Thanksgiving Day, the crowd hushed as Phil Hay 40 from the SWAT team fired a tear gas canister toward the camper. It pierced the metallic skin on one side, went straight through and came out the other side. Some people can survive pepper spray, but no one can breathe with tear gas choking them. And Scott Scurlock was hiding in a tiny camper. The sound of the shot faded and then everyone watched to see the door burst open and a choking man tumble out.

But nothing happened. Sabrina Adams stood at the edge of the crowd, silent. And then she turned and moved to an area where she could use a phone. She called Bill and Mary Jane Scurlock and told them what had just happened. Bill put another call in to the FBI, and wanted to know if it was true that the police had fired tear gas into the camper where his son was supposed to be and that Scott had not come out. He needed to know what that meant. Faye Greenlee could not tell him because she didn’t know. She was not on the scene. Even if she had been, she wouldn’t have been able to tell him. No one could be sure. At 6,20, Phil Hay fired another tear gas canister into the camper. And, again, there was no response. Now, there was no question in anyone’s mind that, if there was a man inside, he was dead. Sergeant Paul Mcdonagh, head of the Emergency Response Team, walked slowly toward the bullet riddled camper.
 
It was brightly lit by auxiliary lights. He moved past the tall fir trees, across wet grass strewn with autumn leaves, and then past the still-lit flashlight that Howard Mont had dropped just after the first shot was fired hours before.

With his team covering him, Mcdonagh opened the camper door. No one breathe . His voice came over the radio, “We don’t see anything ..

.

“ That could not be. There was no way that Scott Scurlock could have gotten out of that camper. Not if he had been in there when Howard Mont pushed aside the cushion and looked in shortly before three. A deeper silence gripped the crowd now as Mcdonagh moved around inside the camper. Out of all of those hundreds listening for some word from the SWAT commander, no one held their breaths more than Mike Magan and Shawn Johnson. And then Mcdonagh’s voice said, “There’s a lot of blood .. . a lot of blood. But we can’t find a body.” Shawn actually thought, What is this guy a ghost? There’s got to be a body in there.

What do they mean there’s no body? They could see the flicker of floodlights and shadows inside the camper, and then, finally, Mcdonagh said, “We have a body.” After a long pause, he said, “It appears to be that of a white male in his late thirties.” Paul Mcdonagh had not been able to see the man at first because he was almost hidden beneath a tiny dinette table that sat on a stainless steel pedestal. The dead man had wrapped himself in blue and red gingham print plastic table cloths, a bedspread, and upholstered cushions, effectively disappearing in the protective coloration of the camper decor. He was positioned on his right side, the right side of his face lying on the built-in seat beside the table, and his legs tucked below. Only his left hand rested on the table top. The body in the trailer wore a dark green shirt, gray pants, and beige boat shoes, and the deceased had a profusion of curly dark hair. His face was not disfigured.

Mcdonagh called for someone to bring a picture of Scott Scurlock down to the camper so that they might make positive identification.

Mike Magan realized he didn’t want to go. It was over at last.

“I figured he was dead, “ Mike said. “It had been so long, and there were so many bullets. And, now, with the tear gas, when there was no responsehe had to be dead. I didn’t particularly want to see his body.” Shawn Johnson could hear other officers saying, “We got him.

It’s wrapped up. It’s over.”

“Not in my mind, it wasn’t, “ Shawn said. “I had some pictures of Scott that I’d taken from the search that morning. One was in my pocket and I’d given one to the Seattle Police Department to put up on the bulletin board at the command post.

Until that day, nobody really knew what Hollywood looked like. I realized that I needed to go down to the camper to see who this was.” On strangely wooden legs, Johnson made his way down through the fir trees.
 
He had seen only one other body in his career, and that had been another bank robber who had been fatally shot after robbing a Wedgwood area bank. Homicide Detectives Greg Mixsell, Walt Maning, and Cynthia Tall man had been at the command post . , . all afternoon, and they had been joined by Sergeant Don Cameron, and detectives Sonny Davis, Al Gerdes, and Cloyd Steiger. The task of determining the sequence of events was now up to the Seattle Police Homicide Unit.

There was no more danger from the man who half lay/half sat behind and beneath the camper’s table. There was no possibility any longer that he would escape. Don Cameron, something of a legend in the Seattle Police Homicide Unit, had been there longer than anyone assigned to homicide.
 
Big enough to dwarf most patrol officers, Cameron had forgotten more about unveiling the mysteries of violent deaths than most of his detectives knew. He was a familia rand reassuring sight in his tan raincoat. The crime scene was in his experienced hands now.

Cameron glanced at the photograph Shawn Johnson held out and nodded.

The dead man was undoubtedly William Scott Scurlock. How and when he had died would take a little while longer to determine.

No one could stay inside the camper for more than a few seconds because it was permeated with tear gas fumes. It would be at least an hour before they could start processing the death scene. Even then, the homicide detectives would have to wear gas masks.

Johnson glanced at the body of the man who had been Hollywood. He wanted to say, “Wake up, and talk to me! “ but he knew he would never get to ask the questions he had been saving up. The lights, the blood, the acrid, choking smell of tear gas, and so many hours without food or sleep made it all seem surreal. Shawn Johnson turned and walked away.

He still had evidence to deliver to the FBI downtown, and then he could go home. As he drove, he remembered how he had talked to his wife about celebrating when they finally caught Hollywood and his accomplices, how they would have a big party at their house and invite everyone who had worked on the twenty bank robberies. “I didn’t feel like celebrating, “ he remembered. “There was nothing to celebrate.” Mike Magan watched Paul Mcdonagh walk up from the camper area, after he’d turned it over to Don Cameron. Mcdonagh came over to Mike, and said, “It’s all over, Mike. I appreciate your help. And I’m glad you’re alive.”

“It’s your training that kept me alive, “ Mike said.

And it was. Mcdonagh had drilled his men and the task force to be ready for anything. And when “anything” happened, Mike had been ready.

It was close to eight. Mike headed, finally, over to his parents’ house.
 
His dad “debriefed” him, listening to every detail of the past twenty-seven hours. His mother cried, and filled a plate for him.

Finally, on Thanksgiving Night, Mike slept. Bill Scurlock had waited all afternoon for word from the FBI in Seattle. Faye Greenlee had called and told him that it was true that tear gas had been fired into the camper where his son had barricaded himself. “Then he must be dead, or he would have come out, “ Scurlock said, with no hope in his voice. “I don’t know, “ Greenlee said. “But I promise you I will call you as soon as I do have any definite word.

“
 
At 8,00 P. M. , Faye Greenlee called the Scurlocks in Denver and told them that a body had been found in the camper. A positive identification could not be made until the King County Medical Examiner arrived. Scott’s father said he would be flying to Seattle the next morning. Greenlee suggested he contact the Seattle Police Department Chaplain for assistance in dealing with the tragedy that had stunned his family. But Bill Scurlock wanted no contact whatsoever with the Seattle Police Department. It was 7,40 P. M. on November 28, 1996, when Sergeant Don Cameron escorted a senior Seattle Fire Department Paramedic into the red-and-white camper. At that moment, William Scott Scurlock was officially pronounced dead. He had been dead for hours, although it would take a postmortem examination by the Medical Examiner to say how many hours. Wearing gas masks, the homicide detectives began to process the camper and the area around it. They would be there until midnight, any homicide crime scene requires many hours of investigation, tedious collection of the most minute evidence, and photographs of everything.
 
Although some of their reconstruction of the shooting could be done with computer software later, they had to gather the information while the scene was cordoned off and untouched.