DEAD END
The Crime Story of the Decade; Murder, Incest, and High-Tech Thievery
By Jeanne King

M. Evans and Company, Inc.

Copyright © 2002 Jeanne King.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-87131-942-X

Chapter One

"Who did you kill, Grandma?"

Wednesday, July 1, 1998, Las Vegas, Nevada

Dawn had just broken, yet the temperature outside Stanley Patterson's trailer home on the outskirts of Las Vegas, miles away from the neon-lit casinos downtown, was a blistering 96 degrees. The worst was yet to come: by mid-afternoon, forecasters were predicting the mercury would climb even higher, to a scorching 104 degrees in the shade ... if you could find any.

    Inside the tiny one-bedroom, sparsely furnished trailer Patterson shared with his wife, the morning sun was already peeking through the slats of a rickety wooden window shade when the telephone rang, rousing Patterson from a deep sleep. Turning over slowly, he peered at the clock radio on his nightstand, which read 7:15.

   To others, Vegas might be the town that never sleeps, but to Patterson at that moment there was, or should have been, only one 7:15 on the clock, and it wasn't 7:15 A.M. Eyes half open, he reached over and punched his caller ID button to find out who could be calling him at this ungodly hour: it was a 917 area code phone number he did not even recognize. Shit, he thought, who the hell could this be? He pulled the receiver to his ear and managed a groggy hello.

    "Hi, how ya doin'?" asked a deep, annoyingly cheery male voice at the other end of the line. "Here's mom." Even half asleep, Patterson had no trouble recognizing the voice as belonging to Kenny. Instantly, as if black coffee had been mainlined directly into his bloodstream, Patterson was jolted awake, and before he could swing his legs off the bed and without even so much as a hello, the woman Patterson knew only as Ellen was on the phone, rattling out a plan.

    "Come to New York. I've got an apartment for you to manage that's owned by this old woman. She's eccentric. You've never seen anything like it. Late at night, when she gets drunk, she dances in the hallway in a frilly negligee, tiptoeing like a ballerina. It's a sight to be seen. Listen, Stan, we want you to be the super and manage the building. You'll go in there and throw out all the deadbeats. Evict all the faggots and derelicts in the building. Paint it, fix it up, and bring it up in value."

    Ellen, who barked orders like a Marine drill sergeant, spat out her words in such rapid-fire fashion that she rarely left room for words from anyone else. Finally, the puzzled Patterson managed to crowbar in a question. "How do I evict everyone if the eccentric lady is still there?"

    "Don't worry about her," Ellen replied. "Just live in the apartment. If someone knocks on the door, ignore all questions. Tell them to leave a card, that the building is being taken over by a corporation, and someone will get back to them."

    There was more. As the cobwebs faded from his head, Patterson heard Ellen tell him that she was prepaying an electronic plane ticket for him on America West and that he should pick it up at the airport in Las Vegas. Once in New York, she instructed, he would take a shuttle bus to the Hilton Hotel and call her on her cell phone as soon as he arrived.

    "Don't forget," she added, "I want you to evict these guys. There was a blond Mexican guy renting this apartment for three months for $6,000 and the landlady said it was only for one month. He demanded his money back and couldn't get it. The man had $5,000 on the dresser in his bedroom and somebody stole it from him."

    Patterson had no fucking idea what she was talking about. It made no sense, but it didn't matter. From experience, he knew that he'd find out soon enough what Ellen was talking about, and it probably meant trouble.

    "Don't tell anyone about this," she warned, talking even faster now, as if that were possible. "Nothing. Nada. Pack enough clothes, because you're going to be there at least a month. And one more thing, Stan, bring your toys," she added ominously.

    Patterson knew exactly what Ellen meant, but before he could answer, he heard Kenny yell in the background, "Don't do that, Mom. Don't have him bring any guns. We don't want no shoot-outs in New York."

    "You got it all?" Ellen asked, ignoring her son's cautioning words. "And Stan, just make sure you're coming," she ordered.

    "How much is in it for me?" Patterson asked.

    "More money than you could ever dream of," Ellen answered.

    "I'll think about it," Patterson told her, and then he hung up the phone.

    Patterson knew better than to believe Ellen's promises of Vegas-sized, jumbo jackpots. After all, he'd heard more than enough versions of the same rap before. Patterson was a construction worker/handyman down on his luck and actually could have used the work Ellen described, though the mention of bringing his "toys" did worry him. He had good reason to be suspicious of Ellen and her offer, and he couldn't help but wonder what she had up her sleeve. Whatever it was, he knew it was trouble, trouble he couldn't afford to get into. After all, he'd met Ellen and Kenny only six months ago, but less than a week ago he had learned that their antics had landed him in deep shit with the law.

    At 55, the craggy-faced Patterson was well built and rather muscular. His weather-beaten face and chiseled features had that worn-out, tired look of an old cowboy. Despite his slightly receding hairline, his salt-and-pepper hair made him look somewhat distinguished. Patterson had lived in Las Vegas 22 years and had worked the hotels there since 1978 as a maintenance engineer. But he lost his job in 1997, and since then, the divorced father of four grown children had struggled to make ends meet.

    He first met Ellen and her son Kenny in January 1998, when he answered an ad in the Las Vegas Review Journal looking for someone to do home repairs and small moving jobs. Ellen had placed the ad and when he called she offered him $300 to move her belongings from Vegas to a storage facility in Sherman Oaks, in Los Angeles. Ellen was a real charmer, promising him grand trips to the Bahamas, vacations in Hawaii, and enough work to set him up for life. Under other circumstances, he might have been skeptical, but because of the hard times Patterson was going through, he wanted to believe Ellen and her promises of the good life, and so he was blinded by her glib talk and flirtatious manner.

    As he sat there on the edge of the bed, the phone at his side, Patterson pondered that first impression of Ellen and recalled her superficial smile that never went higher than her immobile upper lip. He remembered her deep black eyes that stared menacingly through the Coke bottle lenses of her cheap, over-the-counter glasses and her distinctively thick black eyebrows that were plucked into gothic arches that enhanced a suggestion of demonic possession.

    As for Kenny, he was a docile, dutiful, humanoid son to the woman he called "Mom" in a way that Patterson found a little creepy. Kenny, who was easygoing, had youthful, collegiate good looks, yet his smile was at times as sinister as that of Hannibal Lecter. Kenny could be personable and charming one moment, but in the flash...