The End of the Dream

Synopsis:

America’s #1 true crime writer, Ann Rule has brought her expertise to twelve fascinating bestsellers. Now Rule continues her blockbuster Crime Files series with a riveting case drawn from her true crime dossier: the explosive story of four talented and charismatic young men -- best friends whose bond was shattered when one among them was consumed by lethal greed and twisted desire.

They lived charmed lives among the evergreens of
Washington
state:

Kevin, the artist; Steve, the sculptor; Scott, the nature lover and unabashed ladies’ man; and Mark, the musician and poet. With their stunning good looks, whip-sharp minds, athletic bodies—and no lack of women who adored them—none of them seemed slated for disaster.

But few knew the reality behind the leafy screen that surrounded Seven Cedars, Scott’s woodland dream home—a tree house equipped with every luxury. From this idyllic enclave, some of these trusted friends would become the quarry for a vigilant Seattle police detective and an FBI special agent who unmasked clues to disturbing secrets that spawned murder, suicide, million-dollar bank robberies, drug-dealing, and heartbreaking betrayal. When the end came in a violent stand-off, the ringleader of the foursome—the fugitive dubbed “Hollywood” for his ingenious disguises and flawless getaways; the persuasive talker who turned his friends into accomplices—faced a final chapter no one could have predicted. In a blast of automatic gunfire, the highest and lowest motives of the human heart were, at last, revealed.

Including three bonus cases, The End of the Dream is another masterful and compelling tour of the criminal mind from Ann Rule.

The names of some individuals in this book have been changed. Such names are indicated by an asterisk (*) the first time each appears in the narrative.

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS = r POCKET BOOKS, a

division of Simon & Schuster Inc. _ 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New

York,
NY
10020

Copyright ® 1999 by Ann Rule All rights reserved,

including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any

form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of

the Americas, New York,
NY
10020

ISBN, 0-7394-01 38-6

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Front cover illustration by Tom Hallman

Printed in the U. S. A.

For Luke “Ugo” Fiorante Teacher, Coach, Friend, and Brother Sometimes the relatives we choose are as close as those we are born with.

Acknowledgments

To my consciences and guides, Gerry

Brittingham Hay, my perennial first reader, Emily Heckman, my new

editor, blessed with both an admirable distaste for mixed metaphors and

a keen sense of pacing, Joan and Joe Foley, my trusted literary agents

for twenty eight years, Polo Pepe, the best art director in publishing,

Donna Anders, an outstanding suspense novelist, my dear friend, who

always lends me an invaluable second pair of eyes and ears at trials and

interviews, and my office manager/publicity man, Mike Rule. To those

still involved in erasing all signs of disaster by mud, Larry Ellington,

Kimbal Geocke, Martin Woodcock, Don White, Gene Lescher, Kathy and

Horace Parker, Dave Bailey, and all the others who have helped me

rebuild. While I was writing, they were digging, painting, planting, and

re-directing water into wonderful waterfalls. Who could ever have

believed it? And to my favorite people of all, my readers!

I appreciate you more than you will ever know, and I read every letter and e-mail that you send and try to respond as quickly as possible. I have a new web site, you can find it on the Internet at
www.ann
rules.com and send me e-mail. For those who have not yet signed up for my sporadic free newsletter (which has updates on what’s happening with people from my earlier books and news on what’s coming next and where I will be lecturing), please send your “snail mail” ( street or P. O. Box) address to, Ann Rule, P. O. Box 98846, Seattle, WA 98198. This newsletter is also available at my web site.

Contents

This book covers the seventies as well as expanding on headlines in the nineties. I discovered that it was at the same time tragic and funny, terrifying and romantic, as I heard of wasted talents, crushed dreams, but also of the miracles that evolved and the love that ignited among the ashes of disaster.

“The End of the Dream” will allow you into the lives of Steve, Scott, Kevin, Mark, Mike, Shawn, Ellen, Sabrina, Marge, and dozens of other people who could never have imagined how a long saga would end. In addition, in this fifth volume you will find three more true cases from my early days as a true crime writer.

These three are among the most memorable I have ever covered, “The

Peeping Tom, “

“The Girl Who Fell in Love with Her Killer, “ and “The Least Likely Suspect.”

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a

ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of

moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding

Riding riding .. . “I’ll come to the by moonlight, though hell should bar

the way. Alfred Noyes, “The Highwayman”

THE END OF THE DREAM

Prologue.

He knew every square inch of his property, all twenty acres. Every tree.

Every building.

Especially every secret hiding place. This wild place was, in fact, very close to civilization where houses crowded against each other and malls sprouted mushroomlike from good dirt that should have been left alone.
 
His land, and everything in it and on it, was as close to the perfect home as he had ever imagined. Everything he wanted was here or could easily be brought here, and he had the ultimate power to protect his trees from the deadly chain saws of civilization. Eyes closed or stoned or drunk, he could navigate every wooded path as if he had radar in his brain, as if he were a bat sensing any obstacle in its flight.

Those who knew him and admired him believed he feared nothing. He had spent his whole life demonstrating that he was not afraid, nothing human could best him. But the thing in his path clearly was not human.

Its red eyes glowed like fiery coals when it reared up in front of him.

It was dark as pitch and so suffused with evil that it sucked the breath from his lungs. He blinked, and it was still there. He blinked again and it was gone. In Seattle, Washington, Thanksgiving is only rarely celebrated under a brilliant blue sky and against a landscape rife with autumn colors. More often than not, the holiday seems to draw memorably violent storms to the Northwest. Many a turkey has been coaxed to semidoneness on an outdoor barbeque because power lines are down.

Wednesday, November 27, 1996, was the day before Thanksgiving, the weather was wildly rainy and stormy, with gusts of wind stripping the trees of their last few leaves. Whatever smothered sun there had been that day had long since set, the streets were coils of shiny black, reflecting yellow streetlights and the red, green, and silver of Christmas lights. Late customers hurried into the Lake City Branch of Sea first Bank only eighteen minutes before closing. More than a dozen people stood patiently in the long lines, most of them so intent on the errands they still needed to run that they were unaware of what was going on around them. The bank’s automatic cameras kept clicking away as they always did, silent, mindless and mechanical. One camera snapped everyone coming in the door, another caught the bored or impatient faces of people waiting in line for a teller, while another scanned the entire bank. A fourth was aimed away from the tellers’ cages toward a central island where customers stood writing out deposit and withdrawal slips.

Each frame of the film noted the camera’s number, the bank’s ID number

and name, the date, and the time to the second. Camera 1-06 recorded the

time at 5,42,13

P. M. at the instant a figure appeared at the far right of the frame.

From a distance, he seemed only slightly bizarre, he wore both a hooded rain jacket and a baseball cap. A casual observer saw a man past middle age with gray hair, a full, drooping gray mustache, and a prominent chin. His dark glasses seemed odd, considering that the sun had set more than an hour before, and his wide, garish necktie was in dubious taste.
 
He wore cheap tennis shoes, the low black canvas type that predated Nikes and Adidas.

A closer look revealed that the body beneath the bulky jacket was too toned to belong to a man in his fifties, and he moved with an almost pantherlike grace. He had to be either an athlete or a dancer. The camera clicked off seconds and the man approached a line of people.

They looked at him with startled eyes and then averted their glances as considerate people do when they realize they are looking at someone with a handicap. Although the man’s stride was confident, his face wasn’t normal. He appeared to have suffered serious facial burns, and he was wearing either heavy makeup to cover scars or a rubbery mask to prevent additional scarring. Here, in this neighborhood bank, no one expected trouble. The robot lenses caught their expressions as the odd-looking man cut between customers waiting in line. One man had an embarrassed half-smile on his face, a woman’s eyes shifted momentarily, and a girl covered her mouth with her hand. What they were feeling was just a tingle of alarm. Nothing overtly frightening had been said or done. It was a little rude of the scarred man to slide between people in line, but it wasn’t as if he were crowding in. He moved through, toward the back of the bank. They didn’t see the gun. They didn’t see the holster strapped under his shoulder nor the knife or the extra gun strapped to his ankle. They certainly didn’t see the other strange-looking man. The second man was quite tall, over six feet, and close to two hundred pounds. He wore a khaki parka with a light brown hood.

His skin also had a masklike appearance, and he had a bushy mustache, too. The teller closest to him saw that he wore beige gloves and lace-up all weather boots. Eyewitnesses are far from reliable, particularly when they are stunned and frightened eyewitnesses. Human perception is skewed by so many things, and people recall height inaccurately more often than not. A man who is frightening may be remembered as being much taller than he really is. “Young” or “old” is relative to the age of the witness.

These two strangers would be described as anywhere from “thirty” to “over fifty.” Only their eyes were visible beneath their masks and theatrical makeup. The first man pushed past a bank customer, walked up to a teller, and said, “Step back. Stay away from the counter.

This is a robbery.” Of course. Of course it was, why else would there be two bizarre-looking men in the bank? The middle-aged male customer must have looked terrified, because the bank robber leaned toward him and said gently, “Don’t panic. Stay calm. This is a robbery.” At that point, as if to emphasize his words, he pulled a black handgun about six inches long from his parka. “I’m serious, “ he said. “If you’re nervous, please step out of line and sit down.” The customer and his wife walked gingerly out into the central lobby area and sat down in the easy chairs there. Now, they saw the second man and, when he moved, they caught a glimpse of a gun beneath his jacket that looked like the one the first bank robber held. Although he motioned people to get in line, he didn’t use the gun to threaten them.

The first man was efficiently herding everyone from the tellers’ lines out into the main part of the bank. He seemed to be in charge, he had an energy field around him that was fraught with danger. The second, taller, man was very polite, very calm. When he spoke, it was with a southern-sounding drawl. He addressed women respectfully as “Ma’am.” The first man, the one in the wild tie, had physically pushed the teller away from the counter. He appeared to be working against a clock.
 
Neither seemed worried that someone might walk in and interrupt the bank robbery. The bank doors remained unlocked, and new customers actually walked into the bank, unaware that anything was wrong. The tall bank robber had obviously been given the job of controlling the customers and staff. He I gestured courteously as he asked people to move into the middle of the bank or into lines in front of the tellers’ cubicles.
 
Every one complied. From the outside, it would look as if business was being carried on as usual. The smaller man’s voice boomed throughout the quiet bank. “Who is the vault teller? “ He seemed to know the inner workings of a bank and the duties of the staff. The big money would surely be in the vault. A bank employee stepped up and said, “I’m the vault teller. I’ll go with you.” He led the way through the gate into the tellers’ area. It seemed a very long time before the two men emerged from the vault. Some witnesses thought it was ten minutes, some thought it was half that time. When they came out, the robber who was choreographing the crime carried a shiny blue duffel bag with a rope tied tight at the opening. He tossed it over the gate, and then placed one hand on a low partition and leapt over it effortlessly. Again, his physical agility was incongruous with his gray hair and mustache. Now, those closest could see that he carried a handheld walkie-talkie radio.
 
He spoke into the radio, saying what sounded like, “Did you hear anything? “ or “Is she here? “ And then they were gone. One customer insisted on following the two bank robbers despite the pleadings of the others.