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Amazingly, Scott turned next to Kevin, who had stubbornly resisted him.
When Kevin asked him what he had in mind, Scott said he couldn't tell
him any details of what was involved or what the project was. He asked
Kevin to trust him. "He only said, " Kevin recalled, ""I guarantee you
that you will make more money than you have ever had in your entire
life. All it will take is one afternoon. One afternoon. I am talking
about a quarter of a million dollars, Bubba." It wasn't even a decision
for Kevin Meyers. He stared back at Scott and felt only sadness. He
didn't want to know what Scott's project was. Whatever it was, it
couldn't be good.
Anything that would make him $250,000 in one afternoon could most
certainly also put him in prison. When Kevin shook his head slowly,
Scott didn't seem angry. Scott knew him well enough to know Kevin could
not be persuaded when he had made his mind up.
It wasn't long after that strangely inscrutable meeting that Kevin
Meyers' fears about what Scott was involved in were confirmed. He was in
Florida, looking for a piece of property he could afford, when he
stopped by to see Bobby Gray. "Bobby told me that Scott was robbing
banks, " Kevin said. "He told me Scott tried to get him into it, and how
he had changed his mind at the last minute.
Maybe I knew it all along and tried to deny it. I don't know what I
thought before that. But, once Bobby told me, it all fell into place.
I couldn't turn Scott in. How could you turn the guy who had been your
best friend all those years in to the police? " Kevin knew that danger
was like a drug to Scott, it always had been. How many times had Scott
repeated the creed he lived by?
"If I die, I die, Bubbabut it's better to go out as a flame than to live
as a flicker. Kevin's concern for his brother Steve grew. Kevin had said
"No, " and Bobby had said "No." Steve was still living in Scott's house,
and Kevin felt sick with this knowledge. He tried not to think about it
but someplace inside, he knew. He was, of course, correct. Steve Meyers
became Scott's accomplice in his escalating assault on Northwest banks.
At first, it was just to be one bank. Scott asked Steve to go with him
to do surveillance on the very same bank where Scott had netted a
quarter of a million dollars the year before, the Hawthorne Hills branch
of Sea first. Of course, he had no guarantee that there would be that
much in the bank a year later.
Nevertheless, Scott and Steve made several trips from Olympia to Seattle
to observe activity in and around the bank on North Fifty-fifth Street.
He liked the location, it was out of the way without a lot traffic but
it was close to a number of businesses in the neighborhood.
All those commercial accounts probably meant that the bank kept
substantial cash in the vault most of the time.
Scott insisted that they go in separate cars, so that no one would be
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able to link them. They would be only average looking men walking by the
Hawthorne Hills Bank. Ironically, detectives and FBI agents were going
over surveillance pictures with a magnifying glass at the same time
Scott and Steve were doing their own surveillance. As unaware as he was
of the men who hunted him, Scott may have felt a little nervous, he
hadn't robbed a bank for a year. This one had been easy the first time,
but he must have suspected that they would have beefed up their security
in the interim. Once again, it was Thanksgiving time. Scott was waiting
for it to rain. He preferred to work on dark rainy afternoons in the
autumn because there would be fewer people venturing out to do their
banking. It would also be harder to identify him in his vehicle, and he
felt that people in generaleven police were groggier on a rainy day,
lulled by the thrumming sound of drops hitting the roof of their squad
cars and the whish-whish of the windshield wipers. Scott didn't want to
use his white van this time. Nine months earlier, he had given Steve
cash to buy a used yellow Renault. Steve had worn gloves during that
transaction, as Scott instructed, but he hadn't asked questions then.
Now, he knew why. This was the car Scott would drive in the bank
robbery. Scott wanted to put his makeup on in Olympia and then drive to
Seattle disguised as an older man with a mustache. Through a
rain-streaked car window, he would look completely normal. Afterward, he
would make use of the two plastic bags he carried one with mineral
spirits to take off the fake nose, chin, and cheeks, and one with soap
and water.
Although it took him almost two hours to put on his makeup, he could get
it off in minutes. If anyone stopped him, he would look completely
different from the "bank robber." Scott outlined the plan to Steve.
They would drive the sixty miles to Seattle in two different vehicles.
Steve was to park near the bank with a police scanner and one of two
portable Motorola radios Scott had bought.
If a silent alarm should go out and the police responded, he would hear
it on the police frequency and alert Scott, who would be carrying the
other radio. "When I'm through, " Scott explained, "I'll say I'm out' on
the portable. I'll meet you near the freeway and we go home." It rained
hard on Wednesday, November 24 Thanksgiving Eve, 1993. They headed for
Seattle, arriving about 11,30 in the morning. With Steve monitoring
police calls, Scott walked briskly into the Sea first Bank, Hawthorne
Hills branch, for the second November in a row. The bank manager spotted
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