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Less than two weeks later, the shootings began, starting in Alabama and then clustering around Washington. At least 10 times in three weeks, police ran a check on the Caprice's license-plate number but never found any reason to detain the man or the boy, according to the Washington Post. With each escape, the pair got bolder. In the sniper's letter to the police, after nine killings, the sudden demand for $10 million suggested a tone more giddy than calculated. The demand--to set up an account so the killers could withdraw the money from any ATM in the world with a stolen credit card in their possession--was "preposterous," says an investigator. "He's going to get out $300 a day in front of atm cameras? These are not some deep thinkers."
But if the goal was simply to torment the police and the public, to watch them quiver on live TV, the ploy worked. White House sources tell TIME that FBI profilers even went over the text of President Bush's remarks about the sniper last Wednesday to ensure that nothing in his speech would "goad" the shooter. (Bush had planned to mention all the resources that law-enforcement personnel were using to catch the sniper, but, says a senior White House aide, profilers vetoed that approach, thinking that it might tip off the sniper.) The alleged killers had even influenced the words of a President. But ripped from their mobile nest and stripped of their weapons, the suspects were left to contemplate the next chapter in a narrative no longer under their control. And by week's end, the only officials worrying over them were the ones arguing about who could prosecute them first. --Reported by Simon Crittle, Eric Roston, Elaine Shannon, Mark Thompson, Douglas Waller, Michael Weisskopf/Washington, Jeanne DeQuine/Miami, Nadia Mustafa/Camden, Hilary Hylton/Baton Rouge, Margot Roosevelt/Bellingham, Nathan Thornburgh/Tacoma and Deirdre van Dyk/New York