October
16, 2002 9:00 a.m. The
Sniper Search
And
the hunting of Moose.
he
victims are engaged in the most mundane of tasks: shopping, buying gasoline,
going to the post office, or to school. The bullet, traveling at 1,500
feet per second or more, reaches its target even before the rifle's report,
and in the blink of an eye a routine errand becomes an appointment with
death. There is a sudden empathy for the people of Israel, for now no
one in the suburbs surrounding Washington leaves home without wondering
if he . . . just . . . might . . . be . . . next.
The police, despite
an unprecedented commitment of personnel and equipment, remain baffled
and frustrated as the death toll creeps higher, their efforts only seeming
to egg the murderer on to further carnage. At the center of the investigation,
looking wearier by the day, is Charles Moose, chief of police in Montgomery
County, Md., where most of the crimes have occurred. The atmosphere surrounding
the investigation has predictably devolved into a circus, one edging ever
higher on the O. J. scale, and Chief Moose finds himself in the unenviable
role of ringmaster. His every utterance is parsed, his every decision
criticized by the sages, all those retired cops and G-men who have sprung
from obscurity to populate the cable-news shows.
Each day Moose must
face the ravenous creature known as the media, whose differentiated organs
very closely resemble actual human beings. He must toss out enough chum
to maintain the beast in its alert and agitated state, for when properly
maintained it can be a useful tool in the pursuit of his goal. But he
must take care not to overfeed. If placed on too rich a diet, the beast
becomes complacent. And if the offerings should for some reason grow meager,
Moose runs the risk of seeing the beast turn on him and chew him to ribbons.
There will be no
satisfaction of course — and indeed there shouldn't be — until
the sniper is captured or killed. But Chief Moose is in for a wild ride
until that happens. The public, whose knowledge of police work is derived
mainly from watching television programs like Law and Order and
CSI, seems to expect that a group of detectives can swoop into
a crime scene and, after plucking a molecule or two of DNA from a blade
of grass, have the bad guy in irons in time for the eleven o'clock news.
Well, as we've learned from watching the sniper kill with seeming impunity
for two weeks, real life is quite a bit messier than that. To begin with,
even an investigative team that included Ellery Queen, Hercule Poirot,
and Sherlock Holmes would need some evidence to work with, and this killer
has left behind little but corpses. And there is reason to look askance
at what little has been found so far.
Officers searching
the area near the Bowie, Md. middle school where a 13-year-old boy was
shot discovered a tarot card, on which was written the message: "Dear
policeman, I am God." Found nearby was a shell casing of the type
consistent with the ammunition used in each of the shootings. News reports
have it that no other shell casings have been found, this despite intensive
searches at all of the other murder scenes. It occurs to me that the recovered
casing might be a red herring, not ejected from the murder weapon at all.
The killer may well have plucked it from the ground at whatever firing
range he used to hone his deadly skills, only to place it at this crime
scene so as to divert investigative attention from himself, or even to
pave the way for an eventual defense in court. Consider: If the sniper
is so careful as to retrieve his expended casings at every crime scene
but one, and at this one he not only leaves a casing behind, but with
it what amounts to a calling card, does it not seem that he intended for
both these items to be found?
Complicating things
further for Chief Moose is the fact that the shootings have occurred in
an area spanning two states and the District itself, with local and state
police departments from each jurisdiction joined by the FBI, ATF, U.S.
Marshals, and God knows what other agencies now having a hand in the manhunt.
And in each of these agencies you will find some top-notch cops and you
will find some considerably less so. Owing to the scope of the investigation
and all its political ramifications, it will be impossible to exclude
people who might be carrying fancy credentials and shiny gold badges from
some revered law-enforcement agency, but who nonetheless haven't the first
clue about investigating homicides. Better to have 20 detectives who know
their way around a crime scene than a hundred who can't find the stove
in the kitchen.
In June of 1994 the
nation and the world was similarly abuzz with the yet unfolding O. J.
Simpson carnival. For a day or two Mr. Simpson was on the loose, his whereabouts
unknown, and a friend asked me to speculate on the outcome. I told him
I thought the proper conclusion, in the time-honored Los Angeles tradition,
would be a nice long car chase culminating with Simpson's death in a shootout.
Alas, only the car chase came to pass, and you know the rest. Here's hoping
for a more fitting end for the sniper, and may it come quickly.
—
Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "Jack
Dunphy" is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are
his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.
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he
victims are engaged in the most mundane of tasks: shopping, buying gasoline,
going to the post office, or to school. The bullet, traveling at 1,500
feet per second or more, reaches its target even before the rifle's report,
and in the blink of an eye a routine errand becomes an appointment with
death. There is a sudden empathy for the people of Israel, for now no
one in the suburbs surrounding Washington leaves home without wondering
if he . . . just . . . might . . . be . . . next. 
