October 23, 8 p.m. I walked into the conference area and break room one floor down from the intelligence team area. As I entered, I quickly realized that I was the highest-ranking trooper in the room. It was getting later into the evening, and the majority of our top brass had gone home out of sheer exhaustion. Rank is relative, depending on the police agency. My rank of lieutenant in intelligence was equal to the rank of captain or major in other departments. It all depended on your responsibility. A state police lieutenant is commissioned by the governor and is considered a commander. Most troopers rarely have to deal with anybody of a higher rank. To a working trooper, the lieutenant is the old man and is to be respected and feared. But at the joint operations center there were usually several lieutenants and a captain or major hanging around, so I was a little surprised that I outranked everyone in the room. I wasn’t concerned about it—I knew that my captain, major, and the colonel had full faith in me. Commanders who can’t cut it are quickly removed from the field and stashed in nonoperational functions. I knew Captain McAndrew was still working, but he was somewhere else. Anyway, I walked in and plopped my tired ass into one of the folding chairs.
In front of me, eighteen experienced investigators along with the task force leadership and top agents from the FBI and ATF were arguing. Should they release the flyers and the suspect information to all the police units out on the street? If they did, would that give the suspects time to dump their car? Once lookouts were broadcast over the police channels, the news media would pick up on it immediately. Then the media frenzy would hit. Regularly scheduled programming would be interrupted. There would be no way of stopping the suspects from hearing it.
I had worked with these agencies in the past. What I was hearing, in my opinion, was more interagency jealousy. Each group had already made a partial release to their own agents, and they had agents in the field looking for the Caprice, and each agency was hoping to be the one to catch the big fish. After three weeks of working together as a combined team at levels never before seen in law enforcement, the whole thing was breaking down because it was nearly time for the big we-got-’em press release, and each federal agency wanted to be the one that got them. They all wanted to be the ones leading Muhammad and Malvo in the “perp walk” for the TV cameras.
Who the hell cares who puts the cuffs on the bastards? The point was to capture them and stop the killings. Every one of us wanted this to end. We wanted to be able to go home, have dinner with our families, watch some TV, play with the dog, and above all else get some sleep. As I sat there listening to this inane back and forth, I couldn’t get over how stupid this was becoming. We had worked together so well over the past three weeks, and I’d be damned if it was going to fall apart over who got to do the perp walk. The anger welled up inside of me, and I just lost it.
“Who the hell is going to pay for the trooper’s funeral?” I blurted out. “We have all this information about the car and the suspects, and we’re not sharing it with them? What happens if some trooper or officer out there stops the Caprice on what they think is a routine traffic stop and they get their fucking head blown off?” I wasn’t directing my comments to anybody in particular. I was tired and frustrated, and could not believe that while our entire region was holding its breath in fear, and the rest of the country was afraid that this would start happening in their neighborhoods, here we were like a bunch of five-year-olds arguing over who gets the last damn cupcake.
If looks could kill, I would’ve been taking an immediate dirt nap. More than one of the lead agents in that room shot me one of those “who the hell do you think you are” looks. I was too tired and pissed off to care. I stepped out of the room and exhaled. Then I called state police headquarters and was promptly connected to Colonel Mitchell. I briefed him on what was happening. He was less than pleased. Then he gave me a direct order. I was to fax a flyer to headquarters to be immediately broadcast to all state police units in Maryland. He wanted every police car in the state to have the information right now. I was told to mass-produce the flyers and get them distributed as quickly as possible. He also told me to let the task force know that these were my orders, and if anybody had any problems with them they could contact him directly. He also told me to get the flyers over to the Rockville Barrack to have them assist in the distribution.
Finally, he said this would be a good time for me to get the hell out of the joint operations center. “Dave,” he said, “you were okay right up to the part when you asked them which one of them was going to pay for the funeral.” He chuckled. “I’m sure you pissed off some big-time federal egos, but that’s my boy. I can get away with that shit, a lieutenant can’t.” There it was—I had direct orders from the boss. For the first time in a long time I felt like I had a mission, something I could personally do that would contribute to the overall mission at hand.
Colonel Mitchell’s language was a little more colorful than what I just described, but the point was that he and I were clearly on the same page. And since he was the boss, I had no problem seeing to it that those orders were carried out. The bottom line was this: although we were all working together on this thing, I didn’t work for the FBI or ATF. I worked for the Maryland State Police.
I went back to the conference room and announced what my orders were and then promptly left the room, leaving some angry agents in my wake. I didn’t give a rat’s ass what they thought. I had my orders, and I was damn well going to carry them out.
I grabbed a handful of flyers, jumped into car 662, and headed out to the Rockville Barrack. On the way I called the state police duty officer in our Pikesville headquarters and relayed my orders. I told him I would be faxing them a copy of the flyer from the Rockville Barrack in a few minutes.