The End of the Dream (34 page)

Neither of them was Hollywood. Mike Magan was full of both adrenaline and despair, they could not have gone through all the organizing, planning, training, daily briefings, endless stakeouts, only to lose their quarry now. Hollywood couldn’t have had that much of a head start.
 
The silent alarms had gone out before he was even in the bank, and the customer who had followed the two robbers had seen them on foot less than ten minutes before Magan arrived on the scene. Mike knew they would have to get their makeup off, they couldn’t risk being stopped in their full bank robbery regalia. And Hollywood and his crew would have to find their way to the freeway in a blinding downpour.

Mike figured Hollywood wasn’t going to have any better luck in the traffic jams than he himself had had, but if he tried to drive on the shoulders, some Seattle cop would pull him over. That thought gave Magan a chill. He didn’t want any state trooper or local cop encountering Hollywood unaware. That had always been his fear, but now he stood by his decision to keep full disclosure from the whole police department.
 
He still suspected that the most prolific bank robber in decades might be a cop himself. Mike knew he had to find Hollywood before any uniformed officer stopped the getaway vehicle. Convinced as he was that Hollywood had come from outside Seattle, Mike figured he couldn’t begin to know all the shortcuts and circuitous streets in the northeast section of Seattle the way he himself did. Mike had grown up here, dated a girl here, and been on patrol here. All these streets were his backyard. With the radio chattering in their ears, Mike headed south on Thirty-fifth Avenue NE. They had just about reached NE Seventy-fifth when, up ahead, they spotted a white Astrovan.

That was near enough to one of the vehicles that Hollywood was believed to drive to warrant a closer look. The van turned west, then south, and then west again. Magan didn’t know if the driver knew he was being tailed. He was just behind it when the van stopped at a four-way intersection at NE Seventy-fifth and Twenty-fifth Avenue NE. The van appeared to be in the process of turning left once more when Mike pulled up behind. He moved in so close that no one inside could open the rear doors of the van.

Another inch and their bumpers would have locked. If this white van was Hollywood’s getaway vehicle, he didn’t want anyone bursting out of the back. He could see the license numbera Washington plate, LT-1198, and he asked the dispatcher to check it through WASIC computers. Mike, Ellen Glasser, and Pete Erickson could see the heavy condensation on the van’s rear windows as if someone inside was breathing heavily and sweating.
 
The dome light was turned on in the back part of the van, and it looked as if someone was moving a flashlight back and forth.

They could see something flickering and glowing. Mike Magan had always believed that Hollywood used a van for his “second” getaway vehicle, but since it was the “first” getaway car that was left behind, he could not be sure that this supposition was correct.

He radioed that he was about to make a “felony stop.” And then the red light changed to green and the white van turned left, with the trio of task force members right behind, and now eight Seattle marked patrol cars joined the grim parade. Mike clocked the van at fifteen to eighteen miles an hour. It turned right onto Twenty-fourth Avenue NE, a residential street that was narrower than NE Seventy-fifth, with cars parked along both curbs. It was not the kind of neighborhood where people expect a police chase.

Hillary Lenox* stepped out of her house at Seventy-fifth and Twenty-fourth at 6,23 P. M. She had to walk her dogs, even though the wind was blowing so violently that garbage cans were bouncing and rolling across the sidewalks and into the street. She had barely started down the walk when she heard sirens and the sound of cars racing. “I heard the tires squeak on the pavement, “ she said, and described looking up to see a white late model van stop sideways against the curb.
 
She was only thirty feet from the driver of the van who got out and stood by his door. Mike Magan had seen that the van had moved more and more slowly. He wondered if he had guessed wrong, especially when it stopped suddenly. He saw no brake lights, it looked as though the driver had let the car coast to its spot against the curb. He slammed on his brakes.

His car was fifty to sixty-five feet behind the white van, and a little to the left. He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw that his backup was there. All those marked patrol cars behind him.

The Best in the West. He had always known he could count on them.

If somebody hopped out of the white van carrying a turkey and a bag of groceries, Mike Magan was going to feel pretty foolish.

But he knew with the instinct that lives in every superior cop’s guts that if anybody got out of the van, it wouldn’t be a turkey they were carrying. There was no turkey. Hillary Lenox half-crouched, frozen in place as she saw the police cars, knowing instinctively that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mike squinted through his rain-streaked windshield. He couldn’t see the driver’s door of the van.
 
He slid out from behind his steering wheel, drawing his Glock 40 caliber pistol from its holster, and taking cover behind his car door.

He could see a man standing outside the van now at the driver’s door.

He was white, slight in build, and had a mustache. He was also holding a semiautomatic rifle at port arms. It seemed to Magan that the man was waiting for him to get out of his car. The man took aim at him, placing the rifle on his right shoulder. He seemed to be pulling the trigger, but there was no accompanying boom, even though the man’s body jerked forward as if he was anticipating fire. Mike ran toward the rear of his vehicle, shouting to the officers in the patrol car behind him, “Automatic weapon!

Automatic weapon! Get down! GET DOWN! “ Hillary Lenox heard him yell, and she saw one officer move forward and crouch behind his car.

She started running when she heard gunshots. From his position behind the right door of Magan’s car, Pete Erickson had seen the sliding door on the right side of the van open, he couldn’t see the man outside the van with the semiautomatic rifle, but he heard Mike scream at the patrolmen to get down. Ellen Glasser had pulled her weapon and was behind the back door on the left side of their car. She heard Mike’s warning, dove across the back seat and heard the first booms of powerful rounds. She notified FBI radio that they were “taking fire.

“ In actuality, they weren’t. The bullets came from Mike Magan’s gun.

He had seen the man next to the white van getting ready to fire again as he held the assault rifle’s barrel up toward his right shoulder with his left hand, with the stock placed against his upper right thigh. He was racking the slide back and forth, getting ready to fire. And then he had disappeared from Mike’s view. Mike was afraid that the man, and whoever was in the van with him, were about to pull “the old bear trick” and come around behind them and wipe them all out. Mike’s intent was to eliminate the driver from the equation. He wanted him disabled so that he couldn’t shoot or drive away. Mike Magan lifted his Glock and fired straight into the left rear door of the white van.

Six times, maybe seven.

Then the van doors closed and it started up again, slowly, heading north along the quiet residential street. Mike had no idea if his bullets had struck anyone, but he leapt behind the steering wheel and told Ellen and Pete to hold on as he kept pace with the van. It turned west on NE Seventy-seventh. He tried to find his radio to call “Help the officer, “ but in the chaos of gunfire, it was out of reach somewhere on the floor.
 
“But we don’t quit, “ Magan explained, remembering the terror of a firefight. “It was Go! Go! Go! Your training just kicks in.

I knew I had to pop the guy hard the first time and I’d popped him.

I had the uniformed guys with me, I was in Union 2, my old district.” Magan’s car followed the white van as it moved slowly around a traffic circlea little island of trees planted to slow down drivers on Ravenna Avenue NEAND stopped diagonally in the intersection, but he had shut off his lights. Mike stopped a hundred feet behind, jumped out of the car and took cover behind it. Now, he heard four to six rounds of semiautomatic rifle fire coming at them from the van. He could hear 9-mm rounds buzzing by his head. He returned fire. And so did the officers in the first patrol car behind him. Seattle Police Officer George Basley and K-9 Officer Ed Casey and his Police Dog, Beethoven, were inside.

The windshield of Basley’s patrol car exploded in a shower of glass as it took fire from the van. But neither Basley nor Casey nor Beethoven were injured. The van took off again, moving as ponderously as a wounded turtle along Seventy-seventh NE and headed north on Twenty-first Street.
 
There, Mike hoped to cut it off. Driving past rolling garbage cans, he stopped just below the crest of the hill, and ran back to Basley and Casey. “Shut off your headlights and your emergency lights! “ he shouted. He didn’t want them to be easy targets, and he didn’t want to be backlit himself. Mike opened his trunk, grabbed his shotgun, and ran back to a position at the front of his vehicle. He heard bullets whizzing past his ears. He flashed on the firefight in Miamihe’d read the Forensic Analysis of that encounter Don Glasser had given him. Don must know by now that his wife was in the middle of another firefight.
 
Mike knew that Ellen was, at least for the moment, safe in the back seat of his car. But he didn’t know what was coming next. And then he heard voices up ahead, beyond the crest of the hill and out of his line of sight, shouting, “Get on the ground! Get down on the ground! “ Mike raced up the hill and saw that the white van had struck a house.

It appeared to have coasted to a stop against a brick chimney and a giant rhododendron bush. He racked a round into the chamber of his shotgun as he drew near. He wasn’t sure how many rounds he had fired from his handgun, so he removed the magazine from his Glock and saw it only had two rounds. He reloaded with a new magazine and put the used clip in his pocket. Mike Magan reached the driveway of the house where the van was, not trusting that any of them were safe yet. He took the safety off his shotgun and aimed at the driver’s side door. He could see that several officers were moving in on the passenger side. “The van’s clear, “ someone called. Mike ran around the van and saw two white males, handcuffed and lying facedown on the sidewalk. Now, he recognized Officers Tom Mahaffey and Curt Gerry from the East Precinct Anti-Crime Team, and Officer Michael Thomas from the North Precinct.

Along with the entire Puget Sound Violent Crimes Task Force and what seemed like most of the cops in Seattle, Mahaffey and Gerry had responded to the bank robbery and were well aware of the chase that was going on. Mahaffey knew that officers were being fired on with an automatic weapon. He had turned right onto NE Seventy-seventh, and seen the Astrovan headed straight for the unmarked car he was driving.

The van had veered to the left to avoid a head-on collision, and he and Gerry had watched the driver bail out while the van was still moving.

He had run off in an easterly direction. Even before the van hit the house, the sliding door on the passenger side opened. “As it hit the house, “ Mahaffey said, “I could see a guy inside with his hands at his waist in a crouched position. He looked like he was looking at something in his hands.” Mahaffey knew that whoever was in the white van had just shot to kill other cops. “I exited my car and yelled to the suspect that I was the police and to come out of the van with his hands visible gerry was yelling too.” At that point the suspect moved farther back into the van, almost as if he intended to jump out the rear doors. They could barely see him as he turned away and then whirled, his hands still in the position of someone about to fire a handgun. He wasn’t responding to their commands. Mahaffey said he fired two rounds. Still, the man in the van wouldn’t come out.

Mahaffey yelled again, and finally the man came out, clutching his hands at his waist. He lay on his back and side, rolling around in pain.
 
Another white male had come from the van then. He fell to the ground on his face and barely moved. Gerry and Mahaffey had approached them both, and, with Thomas, had handcuffed them. Thomas had advised both of their rights under Miranda. The first man acknowledged that he understood, the second seemed to be past understanding. Mike Magan approached the two men on the ground, halfway expecting that he might recognize them he had been one step behind them for so long. “It appeared to me that both had been shot, “ Magan recalled. “I saw blood coming from one right shoulder and arm.

The second white male was bleeding from the right side of his stomach, and it looked to me that he was not conscious and maybe dead. Then I realized that the third suspect, the driver, had jumped from the van while it was still moving and had run southbound down an alley.” Mike rolled one of the wounded men onto his back so he could see his face.

When he did, he had an instant stab of recognition. “It was the man who was standing on the driver’s side with the automatic weapon the man who had fired at me. He was pleading, Please shoot me. Shoot me in the head.

This hurts. Put me out of my misery.” Mike leaned down and asked him what his name was. “Are you Hollywood? “ He wondered if, at last, he was looking at the man he had hunted so long. “I’m not Hollywood. I’m Steve, “ the man moaned. “Steve what? “

“Steve Meyers.” Mike looked again at the unconscious man. He was a big man, husky, with very curly light brown hair. He was far too big to be Hollywood. Mike went to an unmarked police vehicle, picked up the radio and asked that Medic One Units be dispatched immediately. He advised the paramedics that there were shooting victims, and he gave them directions to the scene. Then he called his Captain, Dan Bryant, and his Lieutenant, Linda Pierce. Both responded that they were enroute to the scene, too.

Mike Magan knew that he had had backup when he needed it, but he wouldn’t find out until later just how many units had responded, and were still responding. The man who was the chief dispatcher for 911 had been in his job for twenty-five years. For the first time in his career, he had broadcast an “all city-all precinct Help the Officer!